A Reckoning on the Road - Part 2: The Fear and the Cage Door

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I didn’t move at first.

I just sat there, engine idling, heart pounding, staring at the figure behind the bars like I might somehow unsee him if I looked long enough.

But he didn’t disappear, and I knew he never would.

He wasn’t pacing anymore—he was thrashing, his fury collapsing inward like a dying star, about to explode in the only direction left:

Self-annihilation.

He hurled himself against the bars—fists, shoulders, skull—like pain was the only proof he was still real. He wasn’t trying to escape. He was trying to end it. To make the silence bleed. To show me what it costs to cage a soul that isn't meant to wait.

And inside me, something cracked.

Because I wasn’t just witnessing his fury—I was embodying it. It tore through me like a live wire, snapping and burning its way through my chest. It wasn’t just noise—it was indictment. His presence alone was an assault on my comfort, on my indecision, on every excuse I’ve ever made for not stepping forward.

And beneath it all, thrumming like a war drum, was the truth I didn’t want to face:

This was a warning.

I could feel the boundary between us thinning.

His desperation had become my own.

His rage, my shame.

And if I stayed frozen there—heart locked in my throat, breath shallow—I knew the cage would eventually break, and I'd lose the chance to meet him on my own terms.

I wanted to run. To crack the throttle wide open and pray the wind would peel the terror from my skin.

But some part of me knew it wouldn’t work.

If I left him behind in a cloud of dust and denial, I’d only take the cage with me.

And when he broke out—and he would—he’d burn through everything I’d built just to force me to face him again.

That was the price of leaving him behind.

Because he wasn’t just caged rage.

He was the part of me that once believed—wildly, recklessly—that I was meant to create something that mattered. That I had a voice worth hearing. A vision worth building. A purpose worth bleeding for.

And I had locked him away.

Buried him beneath layers of perfectionism and fear, telling myself I was waiting—for clarity, for confidence, for the right time.

But now he was clawing his way back into the light.

And he wasn’t asking.

He was demanding.

My hands were shaking. Not from cold, but from the raw pressure building in my chest. Fear, frustration, shame, sorrow—it all surged at once. He was the embodiment of every unfinished project, every idea I abandoned, every moment I shrank from my own potential.

And I realized something brutal:

He wasn’t wrong.

I’d caged him because I was afraid—of criticism, of failure, of being misunderstood. Of being seen.

But he didn't want my excuses.

He wanted my action.

I looked at the lock.

I knew what would happen if I opened it.

I also knew what would happen if I didn’t.

There was no safe option left.

I killed the engine.

The silence roared.

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Continued in Part 3: The Fight