On Choosing My Own Labels To Live By

It had taken me over six decades of living
around people who only gradually did I chose
the greater distance I needed from them, their values,
for them to give up giving me their hand-me-downs
which still had wear in them where the wear was enough
for me to be richer for having these things,
than they were poorer for passing these things down to me.

Six decades in which it took me that long to recognise
what 'landing on my feet', rather than landing in the feet
of other people, meant. Now I need less the sense of regret
as others who tell me I need the help, when how they help me
even more helps them help themselves without me seeing it.

With famly like that, I did not know which I needed most.
Friends with whom I  had values in common? Or the isolation
enough for the old clinginess I had been taught to leave me?
I now want to enjoy life without the hand-me-down hopes
being wished on me, as if a life without them was not life at all.
All that can fall away of its own accord whilst I choose my own labels.