when your badge is your burden

When is your badge your burden?
When that burden has become your badge!

Here me out, you did it because, you were the one,
the one who could listen, the one who could endure, the one who could figure it out.
you did it because you were expected, exalted even to-
put up, shut up, speak up, close down, lean out...

and that burden
of only that way
of this is who I have to be now
of I cannot grow under these conditions but yet I must survive
became your badge;
your badge of honor

its because you are resilient
because you are strong
because a part of you thought:
"I will make the best of this, and
if I must be this I will wear it well.
I will be proud"

but now that badge has again revealed itself as your burden
it is heavy.
it is weighty.
and you have perhaps forgotten that that identity was never you to begin with. at least not all of you,
and that you wore it as shield to a life you no longer have.

that is when your badge has become your burden
because your burden became your badge...

What would it be to lay that down?



photo by Adrian Hutapea
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