A Reckoning on the Road - Part 4: The Message

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We lay side by side in the dirt, breathing like beasts after a kill.

No more punches. No more screaming. Just the ache of impact settling into our bones.

The sting of his words still burned inside me. But where the fire burned out, grief now smoldered.

He turned his head toward me. Dust and tears cut lines down his face. My own too. For a long time, he said nothing. Then, barely above a whisper:

“I never wanted to destroy you.”

He wasn’t looking at me when he said it. He stared up at the sky, as if pleading with something beyond us.

“I just wanted you to see me. To hear me. To let me live.”

And I did see him now. Not as a threat. Not as a mistake. But as the part of me that still believes.

The part that knows I’m here to share something real. To create–whether it's refined or flawed, applauded or ignored.

He looked at me again, eyes wild but steady.

“You think you’re avoiding pain by staying quiet. But this silence? This cage? This is what’s killing me.”

I swallowed hard. I couldn’t argue. I’d used perfectionism like armor, turned fear of criticism into a excuse to do nothing. I’d been waiting for clarity, for direction, for certainty—and he had been rotting inside that waiting room.

“You’re afraid of what people will say,” he said. “But it’s not their voices keeping me trapped. It’s yours.”

He was right.

The bars were every time I said I wasn’t ready.

Every draft that remained unwritten.

Every idea I smothered beneath the need to get it right.

And beneath all his fury, I finally heard it:

Not hatred. Not destruction.

Longing to be seen.

Desire to give.

Hunger to create.

That was his message:

That I can’t wait for certainty.

That I'll never feel ready.

That what matters isn’t perfection—it’s presence. It’s authenticity.

Even if the edges are jagged.

Even if they misunderstand.

Even if I’m criticized.

He didn’t want to fight me.

He wanted to join me.

But only if I can find the courage to tear the cage down myself.