When the Pressure of Expectations Gets Too Much

I desire freedom more than anything else. I want to break free.

Yet, what is this feeling? This restlessness, angst, and irritation. 

I get angry easily and I throw things. I cry at the drop of a hat. I wish to scream, to tear out my hair and to scratch at my skin. I do not want to hurt myself, not really — I only wish to release this hurricane inside.

This must be the way a bird feels, trapped in a cage: the wings won’t stop seeking their flight. They long for the space that signals their freedom. 

But trapped in a cage, there is no release. There is only the suffocation that squeezes and tightens, preventing those wings from ever expanding. 

Restrained, the repression is all-consuming. With no outlet, there is nowhere for the energy of flight to go but inward, where it flails, beats, and batters. 

I imagine myself as that bird. My wings are either especially large or built to encourage a very fast flight. The strength of unexpressed energy I hold has speed to it. I struggle to settle my mind, which runs at a hundred miles a minute. It is a speed that longs to take me to faraway places of adventure and glory. Meanwhile, my physical body remains here and trapped — sedentary and stuck. 

I want to be free! 

Well… innately, I am free. Therefore, I must want to break free. I wish to break that cage, smash it to pieces, and burst forth loudly in a flourish of light, speed, and excellence. 

I am tired of being who everyone expects me to be.

Actually, I am tired of being who I expect me to be. I am tired of squeezing myself into the various molds and personas that have defined me for all these years — the masks I adorn to appease those around me and appeal to their affections. 

When my mind is quiet and my soul allowed to speak, it tells quite a different story — not that of expectations, but of desires. 

These desires I have are gentle. They do not demand so much of me, like expectations do. Rather, they promise happiness and satisfaction — but on my watch, and for my benefit alone. 

All the ideas I have about who I must be to be successful, to be loved, and to belong… they have been killing me slowly. I care too much about what others think. 

But if I don’t stop now, I fear it will be my undoing. 

It already undoes me, in the quieter times, when I am still and silent and can feel the consequences of the ways I have chosen to conduct myself. I see how everything is a performance for others; I live for others’ validation and love. 

But do they know that they are meant to be validating me? Probably not.

There is an energy that has been building while I remain trapped in my cage, and it calls for surrender. 

“Enough!’ it says. ‘I don’t want to do this anymore. I want it to be simple; I want it to be fun. I want to be free!
This is not who I am — I am a shell of myself — and it is making me deeply unhappy.” 

Down on my knees, I scream to the heavens: “Set me free! Let me be who I have always wanted to be!”

The cage door opens. 

As I step outside, all goes quiet. All that remains is a sense of emptiness and a hint of inspiration. Above all, there is relief. 

Could it be that I can actually live my life just for myself? 

There is a catch: 

I have spent so many years living for others’ expectations that I cannot remember who I am anymore. I need to get to know myself again — like greeting an old friend. 

Getting to know who I truly am is a process. It’ll take some time. But I’m willing to open the cage door. 

For I have come to see that the repression — the cage — will kill me quicker than other people’s judgements. And in reality, others likely don’t care nearly as much as I think they do. 

The repression hurts me more than my freedom upsets others. And I am sick of being starved. 

Now, I just want to be me. 

And for that to be enough.