Defiance: The Empty Well

I didn’t choose this topic. But the moment I sat with it, I realized it has been choosing me my entire life.

When people hear the word defiance, they picture something loud, a fist in the air, a shout, a breaking of rules.
And for most of my life, that was my definition too.

Today, my defiance is something entirely different.
It is quiet, soulful, non-aggressive, and rooted in love and care rather than rebelling just for rebellion’s sake, like I did when I was younger and couldn’t make sense of the world around me.

I didn’t understand why until I looked back at where it all began.

The Origin

Like many children who grew up with chaos, I carried a fear deeper than punishment or disapproval.
My deepest fear was abandonment, not momentary absence, but existential exile.

A fear so total that my mind built entire universes around it:
A God who could not, and would not, save me.
A God, who if I didn’t walk the right path, had no qualms of relegating me to a state of eternal perdition
An infinite cold where love couldn’t follow.
Nightmares of running from something I couldn’t name.

Underneath it all lived one unbearable question:
“What happens to me if everyone leaves me?”

For years, I coped the only way I knew: by trying to fix everything.
I kept going to an external well I thought would save me,  a well of control, effort, overwork, hyper-vigilance,
and every time I pulled up the bucket, it came back full of dust.

It took me decades to understand that no matter how many buckets I drew,
how much dust I stacked,
how much sweat I poured into the effort…
that well had nothing for me.

The Turning Point

My life didn’t change because the world changed.
It changed because I did something radically simple:

One day, I stopped.

I looked at the dust in my hands and finally saw it for what it was: nothing.

And when I turned away from the empty well,
I discovered something I had been too afraid to see, the surrounding oasis:
Complete with a spring of joy, love, and care
the perfect security I had been searching for my whole life.

A spring that:
doesn’t run dry,
I don’t have to earn,
and that won’t abandon me.

And that was when I finally understood:
The only abandonment still available was the abandonment of myself.

Yes, I had been abandoned by others, many times.
But the deeper truth was that I had adopted their beliefs about me.
And no one had abandoned me more than I had abandoned myself.

How many times did the child in me ask to be seen, to be heard, to be loved,
and I told him, “No, not now.”

Not until I pass the next crisis.
Not until things settled down.
Not until I conquer the to-do list.

Eventually I realized that their demands were insatiable,
and my attempts to satisfy them were futile.

I was, truly fucked,
and something had to change.

So I made one choice: I would never abandon myself again.

That refusal became my defiance.

The Shape Of My Defiance

Today my defiance is quiet
because truth doesn’t need applause to be real.
It doesn’t need to shout to exist.
It simply is.

Today my defiance is soulful
because I cannot live in the gap between what I say and what I do.
My spirit won’t let me live a fractured life.

Today my defiance is non-aggressive
because I no longer need an archenemy.
I spent too long fighting shadows.
I can’t afford to fight anyone now, I never really could.
I just walk my path, freely.

Today my defiance is self-rooted
because I don’t outsource my belonging.
I belong because I exist.
I stand where I stand because I choose to,
not because someone allowed me to.

“We don’t need no stinking badges!”
Permission is not required for freedom.

And freedom of choice is the only power I have,
and thankfully, the only power I ever need.

---

The Heart of It

So when I speak today,
when I create,
when I show up in a room…
It isn’t a rebellion against the world.

It is a gentle, unwavering declaration:

“I refuse to abandon myself ever again.
And I refuse to look away from the world of abundance, love, and truth that’s always been inside me.”That is my defiance.

Quiet, grounded, lived.
And it has carried me..all the way here today.

— ✦ —

The Making of This Piece

(Origin Notes — where the idea came from, early impulses, memories, sparks)

Early Drafts & Fragments

(Put raw paragraphs, voice notes, free-writes, cut sections, or anything that lived “before the final.”)

Revision Notes / Voice Notes

(Why choices were made, what changed, what you learned, emotional shifts, structural decisions)

Metadata & Indexing

• Version: v1.0 (Published: November 17, 2025)
• Themes: Defiance, Self-Love, Healing, Abundance
• Types: Pamphlet / Essay
• Hemisphere: Right
• Stage: Featured Works
• Tags: