I Ate the Lightning: The Risk I Took That Set Me Free (A Meditation on Risk, Regret, and Becoming) #poetry

You once asked me—
with a voice that trembled like the edge of a metaphor,
“Tell me about a risk you took,
one you do not regret.”

And I—
I inhaled the question
like smoke from an ancient fire.
I let it linger in my lungs,
turning oxygen into reckoning.

What do I tell you, dear witness,
when the risk wasn't a single event
but a series of quiet rebellions
disguised as ordinary days?

How do I confess
that the most dangerous decision I ever made
was to stop performing
the version of myself
that pleased the applause?

I chose to unbecome.

That’s the risk.
Not leaving.
Not falling.
Not jumping.
But un-becoming
who I was told to be.

I folded the self they sculpted for me
into origami birds
and released them into a sky
I wasn't sure would hold them.
I said goodbye
not to people,
but to personas.

You see, risk doesn’t always shout.
Sometimes it whispers.

Like when I stayed up at 3 a.m.
writing poetry
instead of submitting spreadsheets.
When I said “no”
to a legacy made of lineage,
and “yes”
to the echo only I could hear.

The risk I do not regret
was the slow, deliberate dismantling
of a life that was never mine.

I walked out of rooms
where my spirit shrank to fit.
I burned bridges
that led only to masquerade balls,
where everyone danced in shoes
two sizes too small.

And I did it all
knowing I might be alone.

Knowing
that you might never understand.

That you—
with your glass castle of stability—
might look at my scarred palms
and call them signs of recklessness,
when in truth,
they are maps to liberation.

You ask for the story,
but what you really want
is the justification.
You want assurance
that there is a reward
for audacity.

There isn’t.

The only prize
is the unbearable freedom
of becoming more than you were,
and less than what the world demands.

Let me take you further.

There was a morning,
gray as unspoken grief,
when I opened my eyes
and felt like I was drowning in a life
that made perfect sense on paper.

I was admired.
I was applauded.
I was suffocating.

And so I left—
not with a suitcase,
but with a scream
stuffed into a poem.

I do not regret
telling the truth
even when my voice cracked
like old vinyl.
Even when you turned your back
and called it selfishness.

Do you know what it's like
to set boundaries
and watch people flinch
like you slapped them?

To say,
“I will no longer die
a little every day
just to make you comfortable”?

I have walked barefoot
on the sharp edge of solitude,
and I tell you:
it does not bleed regret.

It bleeds awakening.

I drank the unknown
like bitter tea—
each sip a prayer
to the version of myself
buried under layers of "should."

I stood still
while the world spun like roulette
and everyone yelled,
"Choose something safe!"
I chose silence.

I sat with myself
in the kind of quiet
that reveals which parts of you
are echoes,
and which are the original howl.

You can’t buy that kind of knowing.
You have to rupture for it.

I ruptured.

I do not regret
losing everything
that was not mine to keep.

Not the approval.
Not the belonging.
Not the invitations
to dinner tables where no one listened
unless I was performing
some version of digestible.

I stopped being digestible.

I became sandpaper to every smooth lie
I'd ever swallowed.
And though it cost me
your affection,
your understanding,
your presence—

I earned myself.

That’s the risk.
And that’s the glory.

I remember a night
I stared at a photograph of myself
from a year before
and whispered,
“You deserved better.
So I destroyed you.”

Would you understand that?
That love sometimes looks like demolition?

I could’ve stayed.
God, I could have stayed.
And I’d be safe.
And I’d be dying.
And you’d still love me
as long as I never said
“I want something more.”

But I did.

I risked your love
for my aliveness.

I risked everything curated
for one moment
of authenticity.

I chose truth
over tenure.
Art
over algorithm.
Pain
over numbness.
Loneliness
over pretending.

And I do not regret
the silence that followed.
Because in that silence,
I heard the first honest music
of my soul.

It didn’t sound pretty.
It sounded real.

It sounded like rain on metal.
Like a woman screaming into a canyon.
Like a child drawing a door
where there was only wall.

You’re still asking:
“Was it worth it?”

Let me answer without metaphor.

Yes.

It was worth
losing friends who only knew
how to love the convenient me.
Worth
the months of scarcity,
eating noodles and doubt.
Worth
the nights I curled up
in the fetal position
and whispered to the ceiling,
“Did I make a mistake?”

Because regret
is not about what you lost.
It’s about what you abandoned inside yourself
to keep what was never meant for you.

And I didn’t abandon anything.

I gathered every orphaned fragment
of my soul
and said,
“Come home.
We’re writing a new story.”

A risk I do not regret
is choosing the story
where I get to be
the protagonist
and not the plot device
in someone else's dream.

Do you understand that?
You, with your questions wrapped in fear,
your eyes darting
to the exits of possibility—

You say you want to leap
but your feet are married to hesitation.

I’m not here to persuade you.
I’m here to testify.

To say:
I ate the lightning.
And yes, it burned.
And yes, it scarred.
And no, I do not regret
becoming fire.

Because on the other side of risk
isn't comfort.
It's clarity.

It’s a mirror that doesn't lie.
It’s a voice that finally sounds like your own.
It’s breath.
Unfiltered.
Raw.
Holy.

So next time you ask me
what risk I took
that I do not regret,

I won’t tell you a story.
I’ll offer you a mirror.
I’ll hold it up and say,

"Here. This.
The risk I took
was choosing to reflect light
rather than absorb expectation.
The risk I took
was choosing to be
fully, dangerously,
irreversibly—
myself."

And if you dare,
you'll look into it
and wonder—

What would you become
if you stopped waiting
for permission to burn?

#Poetry #Verse #SelfDiscovery #Authenticity #TakeTheRisk #LiveYourTruth #Unbecoming #NoRegrets #EmotionalAlchemy #ReclaimYourVoice #Becoming #Deep #RadicalTruth #UnapologeticallyYou #InnerRevolution