What would you have me do? Seek to achieve your “American dream?” and not my own?

Right from the womb, be criticized with every step, told how to breathe, to walk, to eat, to sleep? To question what I truly want because I fear that everything that identifies me at this point is all for you and not for me? 

No thank you!

Shall I be like the bedtime stories you’ve told me about? Prancing with my red hood in the woods only to be killed and slaughtered by the wolf of mistrust, like yourself? Believing it was instead, someone loving, nurturing, and supportive?

“Oh without you wise creator, we walk this earth meaningless, wandering like lost sheep, waiting to be rescued but only to be lured by the Wolf.”

No thank you!

I am not a rock that when under immense pressure turned into a beautiful ostentatious diamond that you wear around your neck! 

Shall I become your beat-up punching bag while you bruise me with your white lies? 

No thank you!

To cry every night questioning my existence and the purpose of my life? To always be your puppet? To be born a puppet, and die as one?

No Thank you!

Shall I put on a show for your audience to laugh at? To be entertained? While after you group up with your flock, gossiping and telling them about your disproportionate scenarios about myself? While you all huddle up competing against not yourselves, but your own children? Hoping to win the trivial sense of small victory, pride, and superiority when one kid is better than the other? 

Become like an investment for you, one where you can show off your new trophy? But when expectations are not met, cast me away, shame me, when you lose to them?

No thank you!

When coming back home, greeted by your bitter sour nagging, listening to another one of your speeches. Telling me what I did wrong, and nitpicking on every little thing? While I stay in silence, trying to make the words not stick to myself, make my heart queasy and flinch by the harsh words of reality? While repeating in my mind:

“Go in one ear and out the other”? 

No thank you!

Throw me into the pit of fire, expecting me to survive while everyone else around me are also like pawns? Telling me how to speak, when to speak, and when I should use my voice? 

No thank you!

Give my entire life and my identity to you, for you to tell me what is right or wrong. correct me? 

Shall I sacrifice my soul to my creators? Suppressed, manipulated, and sculpted? Given only a small crevice of the world, while hiding behind the shadows of reality? 

No thank you!

Like a bird trapped in a cage is my whole purpose, in the palm of your hand? 

No Thank you!

Sacrifice my life, in order to receive some bit of appreciation? Believing my self-worth and existence are solely from your validation.  Craving that one look of satisfaction from your dark, cold eyes?

No Thank you!

Sacrifice my life, for this thing called “love” to help you achieve something you never could grasp? Hoping that your legacy, the child you bore, carries on your dreams, your expectation, of this “American Dream”. That this child, without a questionable doubt, will be your redemption, your excuse and reason for not being able to achieve your own dream?

No Thank you!

Become like a lab rat, tortured, for the “betterness” of humankind? To become the “experiment child”, even though the past lines of generations have all died? Experience pain, shame, and alienation to make a better “future me”? 

No thank you!

People know your name but at what cost? My own identity? My own happiness? My own life?

No, Thank you!

Must I clip my wings in order for you to fly? 

NO THANK YOU!