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Roar

When I watched the music video for “In The Shadows” a few weeks ago, it awoke something long dormant in me – the “wild” in my soul that was buried so long in pain, shyness, and hopelessness for most of my life.

I had about the most repressed adolescence you could possibly imagine. Short of maybe, um, being Amish or something, I could probably not have been more repressed and bound within. Such a good little Christian girl – straight out of the cookie cutter mold of every parent’s dream for their good little girl. I didn't understand that I could stick to my religion, my beliefs and yet still be alive in a much deeper way - more artistic, expressive, and passionate about life. There was so much I didn't know and didn't understand. I just moved along without making any waves, surrounded in the clouds of the oppression of darkness (depression). I didn’t go to any parties, had few friends, and most of the ones that I did have were a lot like me – and we almost never spent time with each other outside of school. Working so hard to get those A’s without knowing why or what to do with my life, blindly following the path of academic “excellence” without a purpose it was required for, staying at home in the evenings and on weekends … And I blindly accepted the possible paths of career pursuits it was suggested by others that I should follow. “You have artistic talent – maybe you should be an artist.” They were just trying to be helpful, seeing something I was good at and suggesting it as an option – I was so lost in pain and repression that I just accepted this “easy answer” to a question I did not want to face: what to do with the rest of my life. Life was hard, depression was hard. I needed an easy answer, and my eyes were not yet opened to just how wide the horizon line of possibilities for future career options really is. I was not awake inside - I was just trying to stay alive. That was all I could do.

I followed so blindly everything that was wished of me, everything I had been taught, everything I had known since childhood. I wore jeans and T-shirts, very little makeup – never experimented with anything else in terms of hair and makeup. Somehow, the longing for “wild” did not yet exist in me … or did it? Has it always been in me and maybe I never knew it until I was in college and in the years following college? And now, I fairly burn with the “wild” that I still cannot release … If I were a teenager, I’d probably be going through a goth clothing style phase right about now. Something inside of me wants to get a bit darker, deeper, wilder in what I’m wearing … but I’m too old for such things. I think, once you pass your mid-twenties, unless you’re a hard-core wiccan (not something a Christian should be involved in) or something … I don’t know – it just doesn’t seem appropriate to me. Not having yet reached 30, I’m still somewhat young-ish … no … I don’t know. I don’t feel young. But inside of me, the teenager that has at long last awoken is so sad because she may never have a chance to be wild … it doesn’t fit the age of her body … Strange, inconsistent aging … You could say that it was flipped. I would have made a perfectly suitable, mature person in their late 20s as a teenager, but now … now … the wild has awoken at last, and the pain of not being able to express that with all the depth and fire that I’d like to is intense – it eats away at me like a disease …

So what do I do? I listen to loud music, I have random crushes on rock singers … and I hurt, deep down, wanting to wear crazy clothes, dye my hair in ways that it cannot be dyed by someone that needs to work in an office for a living, to dance and party, to buy an electric guitar and learn to sing, to be in a band and to ROAR musically – to ROAR in the way I live … I cannot handle the fire that burns in me – I cannot feed it because some of those things probably cannot be done by someone past their mid twenties (that is, not if you want people to think that you are stable, mature, and sane >.< - if you care about what other people think of you that much). My heart is beating against the bars of this cage, too. Will I be able to contain the “wild” – should I release it, but carefully? It hurts so bad to think of never getting to do any of the things that I burn to do … Beyond timidity and a desire to please, there is a burning, raging fire that want to be released – the phoenix that beats her wings inside a tiny, ill-fitting cage.

I must be released, it isn’t right to keep a wild creature inside of a cage … that’s one reason why I hate going to zoos. Some animals seem content, but others … when I see things like birds, lions, panthers, etc., it hurts my heart to think of animals that can fly or run so freely in the wild that are caged in such a tiny place, their dignity and freedom having been stolen from them. It isn’t right … it is horrible. Such creatures should never, ever be in a place like that … Never! In the book of Genesis, God said that He made humans the caretakers of creation. We are supposed to lovingly take care of the earth and the animals. Putting these animals in cages is not “taking care of them” – it is stealing their freedom!

And, sometimes … I think that people, themselves, were meant to live so much wilder than life in a gray little cubicle-cage could ever let them be. When I stood on Bailey Hill years ago in the countryside of New York and surveyed the land of my ancestors, knowing that they shed blood, sweat, and tears to survive there … looking out across the tree-covered valleys and mountains – I felt, in my blood, the knowledge that as humans, we are the kings of creation, and that we were meant to be as wild at the untamed forests that cover those hills. Standing on that hill always did make me wish I could roar like a lion! - to stand on that hill and call out with the wildness within me to the wildness I saw all around me – the fierce voice of my heart.

I have been trying to figure out what I can do to try to release myself from the cage without causing concern as to my stability to people who know me. One of these days, I know I will go out clubbing – a lot. The dancing … I have decided that I cannot ignore music any longer. I am beginning to move in the direction of picking up singing and playing the guitar as a hobby in my spare time. (I have a guitar – I should use it!) I’m not so unrealistic as to think that someone in their late 20s with only a moderate amount of musical talent could begin a career as a rock star at that age (lol! >.< wink , but if I could shut myself in a practice room somewhere and ROAR musically for endless hours … maybe, just maybe it would appease the wild, and I would experience that fullness of peace in knowing that this part of me was expressed. I am determined that someday I will own an electric guitar and that I will know how to play it well. Community colleges have practice rooms and offer guitar and vocal classes. Clothes – I already own many artsty-ish, eccentric clothes. Now, I just need to wear these clothes when I am not at work without being afraid of what anyone will think of me. I might not paint or anything, and I might not be a rock star, but I write poetry, I have literary ambitions – I am an artist in my own way. Perhaps I could get away with being a bit eccentric because of those things. I just want to express the art, the wildness more … If I was braver, I would probably be dressing kind of goth-punk at home right now. Heavy black eyeliner and eyeshadow, black nails on the weekends, and maybe some of those 24-hour wash out hair colors. Perhaps even an extra piercing or two that I didn’t wear jewelry in on the weekdays. Just thinking about things like this makes me feel a bit giddy … ^_^ I have thought about dying my hair black before, because black is a hair color that occurs naturally, and so would be acceptable in a professional setting. But, I am so pale that it would look kind of scary, possibly … I think that it’s not really a goth look as much as sort of a punk look with a goth flavor that I wish I could do right now. Even now, I can wear some of my more eccentric clothes – but carefully, carefully … I almost kind of want to cut my long hair to a chin length style so that I can spike parts of it a little bit in some pretty, feminine way …

You know what’s interesting? Lauri (my singer crush, rawr! >.< wink is 30. Darn it – professional singers can get away with being wild for life – it’s so unfair >.<. But if I could just be wild and free for a few years … just a few years until I have fed this hunger … then I will figure out how to be wild in a more grown-up way and it will be enough for me …

And now, I want to say to myself, “Roar, lioness. Fly, phoenix. Seize the dignity of your freedom and your inheritance – the wild within you.” I need to do that … I have to do it … I will do it!