Freedom

It's time to let go.  It's time to purge.  It is time to release myself from the bonds that have held me in this place for far too long.  It is a scary thing to be bound by chains, to be held and stuck and unable to move.  It is a far scarier thing to find that the chains you thought held you were unlocked the whole time and that you are the one holding yourself in that place.  So often, we are the enemy.  You've heard the phrase, "you are your own worst enemy."  It is sheer TRUTH.  We bind and gag ourselves.  We hold ourselves still and remain silent, frozen in fear.  On the rare occasion that we actually find a way to move, most of us still pick up the chains and carry them with us - just in case we should ever need to remember that we were once bound by them.

How ridiculous we are.  How ridiculous I have been.

I am a writer.  Duh.  You know this already or you wouldn't be here reading this.  I have never thrown away anything I've written.  I have buried it in boxes, under the bed, in the attic.  I have mailed things to friends (and they to me) that are too painful to have under my roof with me, but I am not willing to part with because I might want it one day.  As I write this I realize that I am a hoarder. Not of things, though I do have my fair share of them, but of emotions.  And what is writing if not emotions poured out on paper?  By holding on to all of those things, I am allowing the feelings in them to continue to bind me to the past.  I speak of how grateful I am to be here.  To have been to the wars and fought and come out on the other side.  And yet, I hold on to the story of the wars so that I can re-live it if I have a whim to.  I cling tightly to them and hoard the feelings and words contained in them.  I tell you how much I have changed and how far I have come - look you can see it on paper!  I am not there anymore!  But how far have I really come if I can't release myself from the words that are chaining me to that place?

Perhaps not as far as I thought.

By holding on to those words, I am giving myself permission to beat myself up for mistakes made long ago.  I am allowing my heart to re-open wounds that have healed already.  I am an emotional cutter in these moments, self-inflicting pain that there is no need to cause.  And it has got to stop.  No one else is holding those mistakes against me.  No one else is screaming that I have done damage to those I love.  No one else is inflicting judgement.  No one.  It's all me.  Which is both freeing and humiliating in the same moment.

So I am letting go.  I am throwing away the chains that I have been secretly carrying around.  I will not allow them to hold me and weigh me down any longer.  The only way that I can do this is to throw them away. Literally.  This is frightening for me because I have never put in the garbage my own words before.  But they are no longer words on a page.  They are a battleground.  The scars of the battle are still with me and are continuing to heal with time.  But they cannot do that if I am living on the battleground.  It is harder than I thought it would be, to throw them away, and release them.  But the result is so, so, worth it.  Because there is beauty in the ashes.  And more importantly, perhaps most importantly...

There is freedom.