Independence Day

Tomorrow is the Fourth of July, Independence Day! When I was a small girl, I would dream about my own independence day. A day when I would be grown up enough to move out on my own. I knew what I would do when I grew up, but I did know I wanted to smoke cigarettes (I don't...anymore). I longed for the day when I would be ready to walk out the door of the house I grew up in. I would only look back to tell a few people off. I mean, I had speeches ready. Now, today, more than twenty years after all that planning my adrenaline still pumps thinking about it. When I go visit those same people on the weekend what I feel towards them has changed. What once was anger is now pity. When you are let down and betrayed by the people who were entrusted to protect you, something inside you dies and is never brought back. 

Your friends become your family. Strangers who you meet and are interested in you become the wonderful gift and you do anything possible to keep the conversations going. Now, I am forty, with kids of my own and when I visit those people who were suppose to show me the way I see a waste. All the time they wasted trying to appear to be something they couldn't even understand. I see delusional human beings, who would never admit to some of their deeds. I see people I no longer feel obligations to. People who can no longer guilt me into giving up my own life, they can no longer hold me back. It's not a sad thing, believe me, I forgave everyone a long time ago. So this Fourth of July, I will be thinking of my own Independence. While they will be there with me, I am free.