I imagine a body of water, the ripples along the surface, clashing, interweaving within each other. Pondering what lies beneath it, yet seeing only what exists aloft.

When I conceal myself beneath the water, I suppress the essence of my truth. When I disguise my emotions, I camouflage the ideology of what I represent. I do a disservice to myself and to those I encounter along my life path. I am the one that suffers the most when I am the one that prefers to hide. If telling the truth feels out of place, I need to ask why I am discerning that way and why revealing the actuality feels wrong when it is right. Something within me is choked, barricaded, so much that I must create a fictitious world. A world that I acknowledge as truthful. But in reality, confronting and accepting the truth will set me free in the end.

If I choose to confront it, I can emerge from the water. The fervent or calm façade of ripples only exist beyond, because a body of water constantly but not permanently remains. If I decide to emerge from it, I am free. Free from it and free from myself.

So today, I will be who I am.

The sight of a child instills us with this sense of nostalgia, an aching to be who we once were. An ache, that forces us to remember to the days when a naive fragility resided within our selves. We are reminded by our desire for such longing when a cold breeze gently slides across our cheeks, bringing us back to when we swung on the swing-set as children. Striving to reach for the sun until it was gone and there was nothing left but the moon.