Autonomy, what a conceptual thing,
Too bad I was spinning alone in the ring,
To show independence was never allowed,
You barked so I jumped for the dubious crowd.
The shame was apparent, the doubt left behind,
A fractured melange in a troubled young mind,
I never knew what was expected each day,
I only knew you had to get your own way.
Autonomy, really was simply absurd,
I had no control, couldn’t utter a word,
I wasn’t a child, I was only a toy,
A thing to be broken for everyone’s joy.
With shame my companion and doubt my right hand,
I burrowed within to a deep foreign land,
Where strangers befriended and offered escape,
And rescued my soul from reality’s fate.
Autonomy, never a choice to behold,
The shouting was worse when I tried to be bold,
You only get air, when I say you can breathe,
My heart was too broken to wear on my sleeve.
You wielded the shame, whilst I feasted on doubt,
No sense of myself, in a confidence drought,
Feelings and thoughts never uttered in kind,
I simply surrendered to losing my mind.
Autonomy versus my doubt and my shame,
I couldn’t evade their insidious game,
Sentenced to life by a narcissist’s rage,
Autonomy won, now I rattle her cage.
© The Complicated Bunny – 21 Jan 2022
This poem is the second in a series of poems based around Erik Erikson’s Stages of Psychosocial Development which is something my psychologist and I are currently exploring.
The Complicated Bunny 