Life is like a circus. Most people who are tired of the everyday run away to join, and lose themselves in the wonder of bizarre oddities and outcast performers. A few ringleaders call all of the shots, and everybody else is expected to go along with the act and do what they’re told. Well, I’ve had enough of circus life, and I have made a decision. I’ve decided that I’m tired of being expected to live my life to please other people. I refuse to conform to the social standards imposed upon me by other individuals, for mine are much higher for myself than theirs will ever be.

I’m tired of being poked and prodded and ordered about like an animal in a cage. I’m tired of jumping through hoops of fire for the amusement of spectators who aren’t worth a second of my time. Tired of bending over backwards, and waiting for the applause that never comes. Instead, I choose to stand up straight and hold my head high. I will not bow to the cruel and the selfish. I will not bow to the heartless and unkind.

I bow instead to the beggar who is the king of his heart, even if he hasn’t a penny in his ragged, upturned palm.

I don’t want to fit in, I want to stand out. To go above and beyond the limits that others impose upon me. I refuse to travel the same, bleak highway as everybody else, the road of Normal with no beginning that ends only in oblivion. I choose to forge my own path, to walk away from a life without purpose and to not look back. I’m setting out toward a wilderness of uncertainty and a world of possibilities. Who knows? Perhaps one day someone will follow me.

From now on, I take it upon myself to say what needs to be said, not what others want to hear, when they want to hear it. I will shout it from the rooftops, make it echo in the streets, that it may stir the lifeless to rise up against injustice. I will sing the song of truth wherever it is that I go, that someone may remember the sweet sound of honesty, and hold it in their hearts until they cease to breathe.

From here on out, I care not what others think of me, only what I think of myself and of my own actions. I care not if they laugh at me, for what is their laughter but a shattered mirror of their own vanity?

I want to feel the warmth of the sun on my face and the earth between my toes. I want to feel the wind in my hair so that it ripples out like a stream of tarnished gold behind me. I want my shadow to follow me wherever I go, as weightless as my rebellious spirit and never set in stone.

Let it be known throughout the land, carried on the winds to every distant, far-flung shore:

This is my proclamation to the world.

I’m setting out on the path that winds between imagination and reality. I’m setting out to live my life, and what a grand adventure it will be.

- Ella, March 30th , 2012