I don't want to be good, I want to be free

When I was 6 years old, I had a pet plastic lizard. I tied a string around the lizard’s neck and took it on “walks” across our carpeted 90s apartment, believing this silicon reptile was my adopted child. As a responsible mom, I informed my lizard of the household rules: do your chores, don’t talk back. I wanted my lizard to be a good lizard. Just like I wanted to be a good girl.

To be good was to be loved. Being good got you a warm smile of approval. Positive attention. Avoidance of punishment. The God I was told about was a master of surveillance. A great man in the sky who could see inside your bedroom. Are you being a good girl? A good girl gets an ice cream cone. A good girl doesn’t get yelled at. A good girl gets into heaven.

For all my life, I’ve tried to be good. More than anything, I wanted other people to see me that way. I wanted a reputation morally unblemished. I wanted people to say bunny is so sweet when I wasn’t in the room.

But I don’t want to be good anymore. I want to be free.

The thing is, I know I am a good person. I know I have a good heart. I don’t have to prove that to anyone. And this desire to prove it, in my public and personal life, has kept me in a kind of mental prison. Afraid to disappoint, afraid to be judged. Afraid to make a selfish choice. Afraid to break the rules.

Needing to prove I was good turned me into a chameleon. Shapeshifting according to my environment, my friend groups, my algorithm. I always prided myself on my tact. My innate ability to never say the wrong thing. To consider every angle first. To put myself in their shoes. Until I didn’t know what I wanted to wear. Until I forgot the sound of my own voice.

Maybe it’s getting older. Maybe something is shifting energetically on the planet. But I don’t want to live that way anymore. I don’t want one person’s opinion to upend my self-trust.

I used to think freedom meant there were no consequences. I was so fucking wrong about that. No, freedom is accepting the consequences. And doing me, despite them. Because I’m not a sociopath. I’m not a narcissist. I am deeply compassionate, empathetic and loving. So fuck you. Fuck you, I don’t know you at all. Why are you in my comment section with: This is so disappointing.

Everywhere online, someone is telling you that you are bad. Someone is yelling into a camera about how you thought you were good, but actually, actually you’re not. What the fuck are we doing to each other, honestly? The same people who claim to want a free world are cops.

I don’t want to be good, I want to be free. Because I trust myself. I know I will continue to grow, be accountable, evolve. That is and has always been my nature. But the part of me that desires freedom, she is just as much my nature, and she has been suppressed, neglected, and hidden.

So how do I get more free? I asked myself this question last month when I was walking my dog and the thought “I don’t want to be good, I want to be free” popped into my head out of nowhere, a spontaneous moment of clarity that is actually not spontaneous at all, but one of those healing realizations that has been cooking in the oven for decades.

I’ve decided that, for me, getting free isn’t about upending everything in my life but about paying attention to small shifts that feel intuitively liberating. And leaning into them. Then seeing where that path takes me.

Below is a list of things I am doing that give me a feeling of freedom. Behaviors I might not have chosen in the past, choices that at another stage of life I might have felt guilty about. Maybe some of these will resonate with you or maybe they will inspire you to think about small things you can do to stop trying to prove your “goodness” to others and lean into the frequency of emancipation and self-trust.

1. I stopped liking my friends’ posts that never like mine.

   I always found it odd that many of my friends who I would consider close don’t like any of my posts, but like other posts all the time. I used to rationalize this by assuming it was because I had a big account. I would tell myself that these friends probably didn’t realize that I still wanted and needed their support, even in small ways, like hitting the like button on my writing and videos, which I put my heart into. It always bothered me because I knew they wanted and expected me to like their posts. I’ve stopped doing that. Not as a punishment to them, but as a way of reclaiming my energy. You must