True Freedom is: Being Me.

SO FUN! Just now: I had the pleasure yet again in partaking in one of my all time favorite things: NIGHT SKATING! Oo ,and on a cool summer night no less? Delightful! And as it JUST so happened, I left my house at the PERFECT time to catch a fireworks show the Alameda County Fair was throwing early for the 4th of July. I mean, it was perfect...

 I was at my old High School parking lot when they went off, and as I skated around with all the openness of the parking lot, and the fireworks in the air I thought with such a shit eating grin “THIS IS FREEDOM!” There were far more people out to watch me make up fake routines to the music in my ipod, but I didn’t care, as I never do. The brilliance of music, and skates, is 1) You can’t hear what people might be saying and 2) if the sight of them becomes too much, you can get away really fast. So I muddled and danced and spun around the campus and to the back baseball fields and wherever I damn well pleased, enjoying the fireworks when I felt like it, and enjoying the fact that I was skating all over my high school campus. Then, just enjoying being me. I mean, being me is TRUE FREEDOM.

One of the lyrics I had heard tonight was “busting out of my cage”, and it suddenly struck me! I have never had a “shell” to come out of. I have never had a problem saying what I think or being uninhibited. I have more of problem learning how to become inhibited. But I realized, often my sense of justice makes me feel enslaved, like I’m “in a cage”. While some may see my outspoken assertiveness as a trait that confines me, I view it as a tool to free me from what already confines me. I value integrity. I know in my gut when I do something wrong and when I do something right. So as I skated tonight, under the stars and fireworks, on my highschool campus in the town where I grew up, I couldn’t stop smiling. And don't think I didn't imagine for a quick second, that the fireworks were in honor of me and my bright future. Tonight I skated with utter confidence in my past decisions and dreams for the future, and I symbolically toasted to “busting out of my cage”, any cage. I felt so liberated. Not as an American, (although I do appreciate the freedom to wear shorts and go out alone and rollerblade past 9pm), but as someone with the freedom of self assurance.