Breaking Free

What is it like to be fourteen going twenty-five?

Put your life on pause and frozen alive.

You feel it rushing past you, sometimes through.

But at heart, you’re still a kid with issues.

 

You know the lines, have the script by heart,

Wear the smiles and play the part.

Impeccable performance and invisible pain,

Patch the holes and back up again.

 

What is it like to be fourteen going twenty-five?

Watched, as my teenage flew by.

I’m all smiles, laughter bursting at the seams,

Hoping to be someone’s teenage dream.

 

But life’s a bully, unforgiving and unkind.

It’s a test and unfair by design.

I played by its rules, or by ‘their’ rules,

And it played us all, for fools.

 

What is it like to be fourteen going twenty-five?

I realize, I need more than just survive,

I want to be happy and grow up to live my truth,

Strike out of this eerie vortex of youth.

 

I am terrified but alive, melted and moulded anew,

Imperfect but with a new point of view.

My vigour for life charges through like electricity,

To face the trials and cut out toxicity.

 

What is it like to be fourteen going twenty-five?

I knew once but am no longer that guy.

Stripped off self-made shackles, Breaking free,

Home again with my chosen family.

 

Fourteen in my heart, doe-eyed, brimming with hope.

Endless possibilities, a kaleidoscope.

Untainted by guilt or remorse, flawed but whole,

Forever young, growing old.