The clock on the wall ticks with a heavy, deliberate rhythm, counting down the hours of a woman I no longer am. I look at my hands and realize how much they have discarded. I have outgrown so many things, peeling them away like old, damp wallpaper in a house that no longer fits my soul.

I have outgrown those blood ties, the relatives who sit in the parlor offering sharp, polished criticisms masquerading as affection, yet vanish into the woodwork the moment the scaffolding of my life requires support. I stepped out of the frame of their unrealistic expectations, leaving behind the ghost of the perfect girl they wanted me to be. Let them keep the ghost. I prefer the flesh.

There was a time when I tolerated the masked women, those who smile with tight lips while secretly drinking in the small misfortunes of others like a sweet, dark liquor. No more. Nor will I ever again shrink my posture, lower my voice, or dim the light of my mind for men who bruise easily—men intimidated by a woman’s intelligence and the sharp edge of her outspoken nature. If my truth makes them small, let them disappear.

“We are made of everything we have survived, but we are defined by what we choose to leave behind.”

I look around my circle and notice the empty chairs. I have outgrown the friends and family who sit in heavy, suffocating silence when I succeed, unable to mirror my joy. I have outgrown the fair-weather shadows who conveniently dissolve into the mist whenever my sky turns a little dark. Let the darkness come; it is cleaner than their false light. I leave them to their dull, forced conversations that taste like ash, and their endless, petty gossip—that miserable currency of the unlived life. I have no more patience for those who sit on the fence, washing their hands of ignorance and injustice. Neutrality is just a quieter form of cruelty.

The heaviest armor I took off, however, was my own.

I have outgrown the exhausting choreography of trying to please everyone. I have closed my ears to a society that whispers, with a thousand malicious tongues, that I am not worthy enough. I stopped picking at my soul, trying to fix every little flaw as if I were a broken clock. I stepped out of the quicksand of my own self-doubt, those old, familiar insecurities, and the desperate, daily search for reasons not to love the woman in the mirror.

I have outgrown anything, and anyone, that does not enrich the deep, quiet essence of my soul.

The house is much emptier now, yes. The coffee grows cold, and the silence is vast. But I look out the window at the vast, unfolding night, and I realize I have never felt freer. It has been a hard time—a brutal, agonizing winter of shedding old skin. But despite all of this, despite the weight of everything I had to break to get here…

I will endure. I will bloom. I will.

© Beatriz Esmer