As a boy, I believed freedom for America meant freedom for me. There was a time I believed every word spoken.

The speaker contrasts childhood faith in America’s promises with an adult recognition that civic ideals are not always evenly delivered. “Freedom for America” suggests a national creed—liberty, equality, opportunity—while “freedom for me” personalizes it, implying a later discovery of exclusion or constraint. The second sentence (“There was a time I believed every word spoken”) underscores lost innocence: trust in authority, public rhetoric, or patriotic narratives gives way to skepticism shaped by experience. Read as a reflective lament, the quote points to the gap between aspirational language and lived reality, and to the emotional cost of realizing that slogans can mask unequal conditions.