Tethers

I move through life tethered. I feel a tether here, to my family. There, to my work. There, to my friends.  And there, to things I own. One for each one of my active acquaintances. Friends, housemates, teachers, antagonists, old reminiscences, one for each person, and all of them tied to me, pulling, at risk of tangling themselves with each other, of becoming a mess.

Tangling themselves up in my psyche.

Tethers with my bank accounts, with governments, with landlords, with transportation companies, with doctors and hospitals. These tethers hold me, grab me, and keep me constrained in a tiny subset of the space of all that could possibly be.

And something in me rejects them. Despises them. Desires them to leave, to disappear, to get out. Desires to cut them, to pull on them til they snap, to rid me of their force. LET ME GO, is its voice. STOP HINDERING ME. It says this, it yells at times, as my mind and body dutifully hold on to them, knowing what happens if I let go. Thinking they know what happens.

Yet this thing imagines cutting them. Lashing at them, destroying them, ridding myself of all the things that hold this moving life self tied to this or to that. It says LET ME GO, I CANNOT KNOW MYSELF IF I REMAIN STRUNG UP LIKE A PUPPET. LET ME GO. And sometimes, like now, it flares up and yells inside me like an animated devil, like a fallen hero, like a crying child, LET ME GO!

And it thinks of each tether it still holds. The knowings and the friendships and the possessions and the certificates and the work history and the personal debts and credits, and desires to burn them. Cut them, mash them, slash at them, bite and pull at them like a dog would cut them, desperate to be free. LET ME GO.

And it glimpses at the futility of its efforts, for a human is inevitably tied to its state. Its body, its wounds and its boons, to its needs, its prides, its fears. And yes, they can be changed or healed, but they only end up replaced with others. No matter that, it looks away from the futility, and roars out again with desperate tremors: LET ME GO!

The body is the crux of this cry. It is what continues, what accumulates and refuses to let go. It is that which remembers, which desires, which needs, fears, and keeps this consciousness imprisoned in this infinite prison. LET ME FUCKING GO!! It imagines a sharp chef's knife, 10cm length, and imagines the stabbing of my body. Right into the solar plexus, blade facing down, then push and slice downwards as low as it'll go, aided by gravity. Destroy the core organs, cut straight through enough blood vessels to make recovery impossible. Cut down the power, so my energy may finally dissipate and die.

But it knows how truly unlikely this scenario actually is, and other scenarios come streaming through. Destruction of my social self. Shutting down all my contacts, releasing my residence, dissolving my career. Having next to nothing, enough just to live, and to walk the earth untethered, free to follow each moment's song.

I also remind myself this idyll wouldn't work. It is not what has become stuck to me. It is my stickiness. At some layer inside me, I believe I am hindered by these tethers, while actually this spacious prison and the tethers are one.

So I continue.