My all encompassing fear

It formed chains around my body

Every limb, every piece of me

Chained down

Every movement created such the echo

The chains would clack and clank and creak

Bouncing off the bars of my cage

My cage of rules and expectations

 

These chains controlled my movements

Made me a robot

They told me things

Showed me every mistake over and over and over and over

Until I forgot it all

I forgot my past and who I was

 

I was just these chains pulling me around

Being jerked about my cage

Their whisperings took the places of my memories

The words seemed so true

 

Who says I ever cared to feel?

Ever cared to feel the emotions you blather on about?

What if I prefer the coldness of my heart

An absolute empowering nothing

Just black

 

Then those bars started chanting

I was raised on such a pedestal

Perfection was all that was expected

And it chipped away all my support

Piece by piece it fell away into some abyss

And my mind fell with it

 

I would try to escape

Such hot anger would flare

I would shake my chains and reach outside those bars

Only to be burned and cut and bruised and broken

I would retreat

The bars would laugh and the chains constrict

I would learn my lesson

 

To escape was pain

The anger, the emotions was pain

Everything about me was pain

So all there was to do was become numb

 

The coldness spread from the chains

A void opened within my mind

The mask of indifference formed upon my face

 

This mask talked

It talked so much

I could not always tell what it said

It hid who I had been

And created who I was to be

 

I faded into the background

There the mask melted into my skin

We were together for so long

One could not tell us apart

 

So I formed

I had built myself anew

Within this cage, constrained by chains

I became comfortable

 

And it was only when I lay on the floor

Crying and even more broken than before

That I realized

This was not what I was meant to be