Words on Boxes

A piece of advice I wish I could give to my younger self: don’t put yourself in a box.

Honestly, fuck all the boxes. They’re tiny, restrictive, and coffin-like.

From the boxes I put myself in, to the boxes I avoided, right down to all the boxes on all the lists I felt I had to check off. Boxes have stolen my freedom and declared my identity and I’m over it.

At birth, I was put into certain categories of human, based off of who my family was, what I looked like, and who I was supposed to be (aren’t we all?). There were all these labels I was expected to embrace and rules I was forced to follow. There was a path laid out for me and I was supposed to stay on it.

In the nature vs nurture debate, I let nurture take the wheel, and I wish I wouldn’t have. Adults and peers around me told me how the world worked, and I took it without even a single grain of salt (huge mistake btw, everything needs salt, duh). I naively assumed it applied to every single person in the world (or at least the country).

I guess I was raised in a sort of bubble; shielded from darkness, but hidden from opportunity.

There is so much more to this planet than I thought there was. There are so many more possibilities that I never imagined could be within my grasp. And I look around at all the boxes I’ve checked to be a successful human being, (school, college, starting a family, etc.), and I realize all too late that the word ‘success’ can mean many different things to many different people. And unfortunately, my definition doesn’t seem to line up with the one I was given.

I want something different, something more. I’m trading in my boxes for freedom.

Okrr