Liberty

"We were reborn. Now, we're free."

Whenever my eyes drift to the clouds, I am filled with trepidation, just in case I see you soaring by. For I know not whether you will come adorned with golden wings, or imprisoned in a burning man-made cage, locked on a path of certain destruction.

Having been dragged screaming to your smallest, most vulnerable state, any trace of power you could pry out of society's coldly-indifferent claws would be sweet as nectar. You thirst for any skittish, ephemeral opportunities to mangle the creatures that stained you -- the creatures who 'made' you. In doing so, you equally mangle what remains of your own humanity. The power to disconnect your inhibitions and dream for the feeling of warm, moist metal sliding through your hands, calling you like a deranged Siren, sprawled out over the blood-dimmed tide. You are ravenous for it as if it was always yours for the taking.

Still, you call that power “freedom”... The longer I dwell on your words, the more they terrify me. In what way were either of us unshackled by this torment?

Any pain poisonous enough to smother out all rational thought and one's capacity to connect, love or grow is surely no liberator. Lucid choices, that is true freedom and power, at least my rationale tells me this.

You have allowed yourself to become the servant of your past demons. Through your carefully crafted display of ambivalence, the desperate, lonely cries of a tortured soul still echo out. When your rage only leads you further away from truth and peace, what will you do then? Will you doggedly push forward on the throttle out of spite: a final, catastrophic concession of your personhood? When the last twitching body that penned your suffering is bludgeoned to stillness, and inevitably our rigged system still darkly chuckles back in your face, what then? I only hope you still possess the supposed 'freedom' to make the right choice.

I am sorry, but I refuse to worship my dead self.

"I guess that's all he was." - Montauk