Renunciation of the mute button

The oddest equations can sometimes be the most freeing. For example, today and quietly reflecting and ruminating about certain situations in my life... And for a while being present with that, has been painful. And yet again though, I find tears springing to my eyes, a quiet relief. For years the notion that I would one day be relieved to feel pain would have sent me recoiling and scoffing at the idea... For the fact of being frightened to death of it- of pain. And by feeling pain and feeling relief, there is no masochism to this. I am simply stating that emotionally, it has been like blood letting- the infection that had been killing me slowly- the pain of the past- had been living in me and taking away parts of me, hiding away and smothering growth, covering it with the loudness of defense mechanisms. And it seems now... That while it hurts, it's freeing to feel it. It's okay now to bow my head and cry. It's okay to voice it to the silence in the room, to myself. It's freeing because it's one thing I have been missing. 
MY VOICE. 
I feel like I have all these years been mute and have only just learned how to open my vocal chords. And in that.... I guess the truth in a lot of ways is that emotionally, that has been the case. I have felt refused the right to speak, to lay forth boundaries, to say no, to express differing opinions, to express authentic. And truth be told that at many times in my life, and this is also painful- that I have been treated like some mindless automaton, meant to just follow orders blindly because these certain individuals (through their own inherrant issues with themselves and how they relate the world) believe me to lack any kind of sentient intelligence at all. 
I have been a ghost, I have been a drone. 
And that for me with knowledge NOW as I grow, as I start to understand a little more of my own self concept, it hurts. That I failed to have a voice then. 
But with it, there's an amazing sadness but also an amazing clarity. An amazing notion that 'oh wow. Things can be different now. Things ARE different now.' 
And they are. While I still struggle with voicing appropriately, because I am still growing into my right... It can sometimes be defiant, nascent and rebellious but I am finding those qualities, as tiresome as they are for other people, to be quite empowering and inspiring. I love those qualities, as it's quite literally, the 'little me' speaking up- finally, as it should always have been. 
But also, I am not met with the same feeling of shame that has gripped me before. There is no great anxiety over 'losing love' through acceptance of bad behaviour of others, it is simply now- bad behaviour which I have the right not to put up with. I feel more grown now. And I can smile with that, with the relief, the release, the knowing that I have come a little further on in my healing journey, but also- that as much as I have grown, I have also grown younger. That's a fantastic relief to me, that I am drawing ever closer to my little self than ever now.