Fathers

I tried to be someone else
To escape it all
It became an obsession
And I awoke in a world divorced from self

A false reimagining
Of which I am the subject
Shrouded in abstract
Conceptual intangibles

I know that I'm broken
And I play the part
Why try to get better?
I was born to tear myself apart

This lifelong dissonance
How could it mean nothing
I become a concept
Inside of myself

All the failures of our fathers
Can't define us
If all that weight fell on our shoulders
Who could blame us?

I felt locked in a stigma beyond my control
And in my vulnerability
I am fed their words and I swallow them whole

Promised a way out, and I sign a contract
A widespread mandate
To suppress doubt and push it all inside

My endlessly lost heart and raging mind
Just keep it all inside
But the shame and trauma
How could it mean nothing?
It lives inside of me, rebuilds and restarts

All the failures of our fathers
Can't define us
If all that weight fell on our shoulders
Who could blame us?

Our anxieties and fears
Can't control us
If all their thoughts
Fall on deaf ears?

I erase these memories
And I try
To reconstruct myself to fit into this life
You might want to be someone else
But what good would that do?
You might want to be someone else
But what good would that do?
But what good would that do?

If all this weight falls on your shoulders?