Don’t Fight For Love, Fight For Freedom First
By Rania Naim
Fight for your voice.
Fight for the right to speak up, fight for the right to find your honest voice and follow it. Fight for your voice even if you’re around people who question it, people who want to silence it and people who just want to keep you quiet.
Fight for your space.
Find where you belong first, find where you can truly be yourself without anyone judging you or watching your every move. Find a space that can be your escape, than can be your home, don’t let your home be a place you want to escape from. Find your sanctuary, the place you want to live in — the place you can make your own.
Fight for your identity.
Find who you are away from your parents, your culture, your school or your friends. Rediscover yourself, find the real you, the person you don’t need to hide from anyone and the person that you couldn’t be all these years for all the wrong reasons. Find yourself first and fight fiercely for it.
Fight for your passion.
The things that set your soul on fire, the work that you can see yourself doing for years to come, the work that completes you and leaves you wanting more. Fight for the kind of work that you don’t need to run away from or the work that forces you to find someone who fills the void your lack of passion is causing. Fill the void with work you’re passionate about so you can find someone for all the right reasons.
Because when you find love, you want to find the love that loves you for who you are, not for who you’re pretending to be to please others.
When you find love, you have to be following your own rules, you have to be following your own heart.
Before you find love, you have to find yourself first, you have to be free from anyone or anything that stops you from being yourself, that stops you from shining and maybe stops you from loving.
Fight for your heart.
Fight for the right to feel without being told you’re too much, fight for the right to love people from different backgrounds without being told that it’s wrong, fight for the right to choose who you love without rules or restrictions. Fight for the right to love freely before you find your person.
Because if you find them while you’re consumed with thoughts of other people in your head, and rules made by your parents, or opinions shared between your friends, you’ll never know who you are or who you’re loving. You’ll never know if you’re settling or if you’re just doing what people are telling you to do.
Fight for your freedom because love is best when it’s free, it’s best when no one else can tell you what to do or how to love and it’s best when someone falls in love with who you really are — away from all these distractions, away from all the noise, away from all those who are trying to keep you in your shell because they’re afraid of what might happen when you learn how to fly.
Fight for the right to fly.