un-Stifle

I.

I feel a lashing-out coming on.

It's late. I feel angry.

I don't want to think about it. But I know I need to think about it.

I don't want to feel this. But I know that I must.

Not because someone else is telling me that I should.
Not because I feel pressured or forced.

Because

this is who I am.

II.

Those forbidden thoughts can no longer remain oppressed. I cannot ignore them any longer. I can no longer deny them their fair acknowledgment, lest I continue to deceive myself.

This is the only way to merge.
Albeit messy and taxing.
The off-ramps have been moved or closed.
The on-ramps are congested and under upheaval.

I'm on this interstate now. For better or for worse, I'm going to wherever it takes me.

A high speed chase or a ride through the countryside...

I'm in the driver's seat, making my way toward that infinite horizon.

III.

Who would I be? How would my life have been different?

I cannot help but ask myself such questions.

But there are other questions, ones that I fear to utter, even in the privacy of my own mind.

I feel like a betrayer. A traitor.

I mean no disrespect. It is not a sign of ingratitude.

It is inevitable.

It is simply inherent to such circumstances in which adoptees find ourselves. We did not choose these circumstances. We did not choose to find ourselves caught between two worlds.

We can only choose what we will do now.

It is only natural that we would wonder, is it not? It is only natural that we would some day find again those questions that lost themselves in the fear of being misunderstood, rejected, stifled.

(So I stifled myself.)

IV.

I don't want to stifle myself any longer.

But I almost do not know how not to stifle myself.
I am expert and well-trained in the sabotage of suppression.
And yet it seems to be leaving me.
I seem to be losing this art in place of finding another, perhaps.

I still have so much to learn. So much still to understand.

I still have yet a voice that I have not found. How I fear finding this voice, and what it might utter should I set it free.

V.

I hear a distant whisper.
Drawing nearer each and every moment.