Freedom is Expensive

Freedom is expensive. It can cost you everything. It’s why so few of us want to bother being free.

Bring it on. Mortgage. Kids. Spouse. Vacations. Give me a high maintenance life, baby. So I can complain about it. But really, it’s cheap, because I don’t have to feel much here. Except garden variety stress, propriety, and the righteous indignation that comes with ownership.

I don’t have to picture you with another. And if you are with another, we call that grounds for divorce and I can sue your ass for everything. Money as a proxy for vengeance. Money as a proxy for love. Money is so conveniently assigned ownership of everything – our sex, our love, our anger, our hunger, our need.

But one day, when all the power is gone, what’s left? When my sex is no longer being used to keep you, when your money is no longer being used as a way to control her, when his love is no longer dependent on how interesting or exciting you can be, when your very existence is no longer dependent on the approval of someone else.

When you can be this free.

When everything flows through your hands like sand, and you are willing to feel how rich and rough the grains feel as they filter through the channels of your skin, and even how empty and smooth your palms feel when they have run their course.

When your heart has nothing to hold on to. When faith becomes the only thing that gets you to the next moment.

When you are no longer vulnerable to being judged, ridiculed, left, minimized, discounted, or abused, but are vulnerable only to love. And when you won’t trade that vulnerability in for safety or pride or anything else.

Then, you will have your freedom – in its most beautiful, most expensive, most indisputable form. And you will continually have to give up everything to keep it.

© Monica Day