How is it after all these years of being free and strong you look around and find you've been stuck in the same web.  Too stuck to know you've been there for so long.  Where does this power come from?

Is it love, selfish love, that binds so tightly there's no room for anything else.  That consumes so much there's nothing left?
Is it the quiet words and sighs that wrap guilt around every moment?  That make one feel powerless and useless.  Forever striving and working and paying, trying to please the one that quietly quietly breaks them?
Is it in the fear of a loud voice or in the punishing silence that declares you're not worth it?
Is it in the insecurity of being told you're almost good enough.  If only you'd tried harder. In words that make one curl up and stop trying or words that push one to work so hard their life is wasted, tirelessly spinning in a wheel that goes nowhere?
Is it in how closely they hold you?  So tightly you become part of them and lose yourself.
Is it in the complete freedom they give you? You fly so free, never feeling the security of their bond, until you're lost.  Until there's so many pieces of you in so many places you'll never feel whole.
Where does this power come from? 

How can someone's life be so carefully and completely controlled by another?  Why are their words so important that they affect every corner of your life?  Why are their needs so much more essential than yours?  How can their words strip you of who you know you are and make you into someone else?  Why can't you be good enough?  Why is it your fault?  Why will you never be good enough?

Am I stuck there?  Have I not realized it yet?  Am I so wrapped up that I can't even see it?

Worse yet...have I done this to someone else? Have I bound someone and just not realized it?