Beautiful Prisons
Our greatest victories become our most beautiful prisons - the stage that elevates us also erases us. We fight to reach platforms that will demand we perform our own disappearance, trading authenticity for applause until the spotlight becomes both revelation and shroud.
Success teaches us to perfect the very performance that distances us from who we were when we deserved it. The higher we climb, the more we must become what others need us to be rather than what we are. Fame is the ultimate sleight of hand: it makes us visible to everyone whilst rendering us invisible to ourselves.
We mistake the gilded cage for freedom because it's larger than where we started. But every achievement that requires us to hide our struggle creates a new form of captivity - one we're grateful for, which makes it the most insidious kind. The sweetest dreams are bitter not because they fail, but because they succeed exactly as promised.