My mental slavery

I feel it....

I feel them.

I feel the shackles grappling my wrists and my ankles.

Chapping the skin beneath it, wearing it thin.

Blood dripping below them from the struggle.

Just shackles to the wall - yet I feel as if chains are entangled around my whole body.

Cold, rusted and metallic

I feel their constraint pulsing through my veins, paralyzing me, forcing me to be numb to my own being.

I have fought so many demons, I thought I had none left and this one is deadlier than the rest.

It restrains me from being myself.

My dire need to be accepted and approved by my peers.

It has lead to an emotional anesthetic fear that I may be judged or mocked.

Oh how simple it is, to be like the rest.

However you never realize that it makes you absent and unaware of your own individuality. 

Your actions either end up being based on fear or with the intentions to impress, intimidate or validate.

You are unable to do things based on simply pleasing yourself, because you are paralyzed by your fear. 

Human nature is such a contradictory thing.

We have an innate desire  to be accepted by our peers yet we still want the freedom to be who we really are.

These two natures can easily counteract each other, sometimes extremely, to the point where no progress is made in either department.

My shackles.... they have become rusty over time, worn thin by my past failures to be accepted by the majority, and at last worn thin enough to awaken a part of my consciousness - the part that finally allows me to see the chains restraining me, paralyzing me.

The chains are made up of my own fear and desire.

My fear to be an individual.

My desire to be accepted and approved.

A battle between my two natures.

Fear is oh so powerful.

It can easily control you without you being aware of it.

Turn you into somebody that you aren't - that you were never meant to be.

Oh, but lust is just as deadly, it has the same effects but we rarely realize it because lust doesn't hurt.

It numbs you in all the right ways- or so you think.

The only way to escape my shackles is to develop and impose the willpower to fight my lust and the strength to overpower my fears.

Then, can I find my place.

Then can I escape my mental slavery.