They Told Me Who to Be — Until I Met Myself

They didn’t build the cage in a day.

It started with words.

Small ones.

The kind that sounds like care but tastes like control.

“Don’t wear that.”

“Don’t say this.”

“Don’t go there.”

“Don’t love them.”

“Don’t talk to them.”

I thought love meant following the map they drew. But with each step I took, it felt like I was walking further away from myself.

One day, I looked around and the walls were everywhere.

Not brick, not steel, but rules, expectations, and the fear of disappointing them.

I wanted to scream, but my voice had been trained to keep quiet.

They moved me.

Changed my scenery.

Same cage, different view.

I thought maybe this was my life, to live in their story as a background character with no lines of my own.

Then it happened.

Not a grand escape.

Not a fight.

Just a thought, soft and stubborn:

“If I keep living for them, I will never meet myself.”

That was the crack in the wall.

I began listening to my own voice.

It was small, at first, barely a whisper under the noise of their demands.

But the more I listened, the louder it grew.

I started choosing. Not loudly, not rebelliously, but deliberately.

And I learned, you don’t have to break the cage in one blow. You just have to know it was never locked.

Now, I am not who they told me to be. I am who I am meeting every single day.

And she? She doesn’t ask for permission.