THE BONDAGE OF SELF, AGAIN

I've been thinking all day about the bondage of self. It's been one of those days when I believe what the voices in my head are telling me. One of those days when I am nothing but resistance, against all the things I need to do, against moving in any way, internally and externally. One of those days when I can't seem to fight against shame and the spectre of a hundred failures. One of those days, despite my believing so deeply that I'm constructing a prison of my own making. I alone confer meaning on my experience. I know this in my bones and still I have days when I let my harshest thoughts become "real," as if they are beyond my control.

     The bondage of self...sometimes I feel I can break the chains I bind myself up in. I imagine soaring like an eagle, riding on gentle breezes that will never fail to keep me aloft. I imagine that freedom will last forever. I imagine I won't have to work for the only freedom I will ever feel.

     I know better. I, very few of us, will walk into another dimension where all will be free and easy. So I remind myself that the eagle must look for food, as I must look for ways to chip at my chains. Sometimes I feel like a rabbit in a burrow, pushing a rock forward inch by inch, unable to see around it. Then the rock falls away and I find myself exactly where I want to be, or maybe it's better to say I want to be exactly where I find myself.

     Then the cycle begins again. I build another prison and work to break free. Even on days like today, when I'm nothing but resistance, I know great wheels are turning inside me and I'll be willing to push the rock again. Not like Sisyphus, as a punishment, but as a woman who knows from direct experience that the rock will fall away, that moments of freedom are possible for me.