I dance, I move, but the motions are not me, I am not the one in control. I never have been. I am only a puppet in the grand scheme of things desperately trying to keep up with the new strings and moves until strings stopped being added and I was left alone to try to untangle the mess. This is my confession, my secret, my curse. The thing that has held me back and left me defenseless.


My elementary school teachers shaped and molded me each one adding their own string. One even went as far as to reshape my entire writing style making it theirs instead of mine. Again like a good little school girl I went along with it. One added a string that is almost like my curse something that has scarred me and I will forever have to fight it.

My writings are usually longer than most as I like to add detail to make my story even more clear. My teacher taught me to hold back to make it one page instead of two, she taught me to strip it down to its core until on the bare essentials are left. She drilled it into me until I was scared to go back to my detail filled writings. That was almost six years ago and I am still fighting it. One of my teachers last year helped me cut that string, but it is only partially severed and it will take several more years to cut it off completely.


Another teacher added a string that I don't ever know if I will be able to cut, and I will never be able to forgive her for it. She made the string that made my work shorter and shorter even thicker and added a new one in the process. She tore my soul away from writing convinced that this would help. My soul has been trapped in a tangle of strings just waiting for me to untangle the cage around it ,but I can't do it. I am scared to let my soul take control to let my writing become what it should be. Sure I am a good writer but I am convinced that because of this I will never be able to become a great writer. My writing and my soul were meant to be intertwined but they have been separated for five years now.


My Junior High teachers have been cutting strings instead of adding new ones and for that I will be forever grateful. There are so many though that are left some that I am unsure of just what they are but I know that they are there. I am more than ready to cut the rest of the strings myself, but there is so many and it is just so hard. They are the things that hold me up and if I am frightened to think what will happen if I cut all of them. Some part of my wishes to believe that I will be like the puppet Pinocchio and become a real person. But each string has their own story, their own reason. And because of this they convince me that without them I will fall to the stage and become a pile of painted wood.

Today I cut all of them severing each on them until right now I feel like I have nothing left. There is one string left but it is not enough to keep me up. My soul is trapped inside that string and I will probably spend the rest of my life trying to free it. I am that pile of wood now there is nothing to hold me up. I have stripped my shield from me and now I can only hope that someone or something will come along and help me pick up the pieces.