Fear

Fear.

It has kept you in line for decades. You have questioned every move out of fear.

It is the picture frame through which you stare.

You make every decision with fear as your guide and council.

An entire lifetime of fear and the anxiety of fear.

A whole life of towing the line, always being the good daughter. Always being in the shadow of your sibling.

Never expressing your emotions to anyone.

An entire lifetime of being stuck in the middle of your mother and your husband hating each other.

Ignoring it and sweeping it all under the carpet to get the chores of the house done.

The house and responsibilities became your prison. And now, it's all you know.

Never questioning why to see if perhaps your way of thinking is wrong, that maybe there's another truth, not the one that you are telling yourself. Maybe there is in fact a more balanced truth, one that is closer to reality.

But you can't see it, it's too late.

Anxiety and fear dine with you at every meal, it kisses you goodnight and wakes with you in the morning.

Fear is all you know.

And if it is one thing that I have recently learnt from all of this, is that I will not live in fear.