My Freedom is a Cautionary Tale
To be Free
To know the true meaning of freedom and what it costs, we first must experience loss of self.
To me, freedom means breakage of bondage, like a bird betwixt iron bars, locked in a cage. To never know escape from the pain of loss, to never know the outside world when finally the cage door is left open but a crack, just wide enough to make an escape.
When I write, I try to forget what I’ve been through, even if it’s in vain, I toil away trying to shake those ill-gotten memories. Coming back to them like old photographs in a binder, I look upon these memories with not only sorrow but a deep sense of regret. I’ve tried to become a better man, to learn from the things I’ve done, and lost. To learn to love me, for me, so I didn’t need others to fill the void I could only fill within myself.
To try and become the best version of myself, whoever that may be.
But nothing makes up for the loss of time.
The whole of my life has felt like a dream, parts of it like a nightmare you couldn’t wake up from. I write this now because I’ve finally come to the acceptance of my o foolishness, and naivete. I gave up my freedom to people I realized never truly loved me, who couldn’t love me the way I needed them to, who couldn’t love themselves on a good day. People are born with a hole in their hearts.
Love, that word is such a beautiful and abhorrent term.
I thought I knew the definition of love, or what the song meant, the plucking of strings that came from my heart each time I heard their voices or looked into their eyes.
Thinking back on it, it’s true, I hadn’t realized the true depth of love, or that the cost of this kind of love was my freedom. Or that no one could truly fill what I was missing.
I have loved women who didn’t love me, who used me, who broke me down. Who harped with jealousy, railed with anger, and razor-sharp words to grind the stone walls of my heart until there was nothing left of the man who had come before.
No person, no place, no love is worth the cost of your freedom, your sense of self.
This kind of loss my dear friends is worse than any pain I have ever known or that I can share with any of you, but with that being said, I allowed these people in. It’s my own doing, that became my undoing.
Or perhaps it was a rebirthing of sorts? To become something new, we first must be broken, to burn away the parts of ourselves that no longer help us.
In my work, you will often find me praising a dear friend of mine, I call her Beautiful Lady.
To me, that’s what she is, more than beauty, and all of my heart. She helped become something new, out of the broken husk she found. I didn’t know how broken I was when she found me, how cracked, and fragile I had become. I felt like a statue with no innards, broken and forgotten by time, like Atlas, silently holding the world as my own life passed me by.
It was she who breathed life into me again, lifted me to help me find my footing, that stone flesh need not be replaced, only be caressed, and cared for. She was like a soothing aloe to my soul, a much-needed poultice to wounds that never healed.
She gave me strength or helped me find a strength I had forgotten. I broke my bonds that fateful day and tore those shackles from the fucking wall, all with nothing more than a whisper and a few texts, it was all over. Though tears fell, I could hear the joy in my heart and the great clapping of thunderous applause in my mind.
I was Free. Free to be me, to find the man I knew I could become.
If you’re reading this, then you’ve made it to the end and have a sliver of my sorrowful tale.
I want you to know if someone hasn’t told you today that I love you dearly, and that I’m proud of you for whatever it is you decide to do.
Though, heed my words, and never let someone steal so much of your heart that you give up what’s most precious in life; You.
