This morning I awoke, as reluctantly as usual, but with a more unusual sense of disorientation. I had been dreaming, intensely, right before I awoke, and my dream was populated with very real people, very relevant situations, very intense emotions. And someone said something about someone else right at the end of the dream, and it lingered far more than any of the complicated emotions that cluttered my mind. "Her freedom is her chains."
Even as I shook off the last of my sleep and started to face the day, I knew two things: one, that this sentence was, although technically sound, also grammatically awkward; and two, that they hadn't been talking about someone else, not really.
They had been talking about me.
The momentum of the day and its usual concerns carried me forward--answering emails, planning a training session, dousing potential dumpster fires, attending meetings, trying not to look vaguely insane--and really, working on a future schedule was enough to knock the lingering grip of the dream from my overtaxed brain. But tonight, at home, as I sat on the deck, enjoying the summer evening and knitting with my cats and my wine and Welcome to Night Vale, I found myself going down an unexpected road in my mind.
Ten years ago, right around this time, I was falling in love with my future husband (now "was-band") and starting to dig in for what I thought would be a marriage and a life in the deserts of Southern California. I was harnessing myself to that wagon, committing myself to the vision of a life as a wife and partner and stepmother and stunted librarian and fish out of water. I gave it my best at the time, but my best wasn't very good, nor was it very long-lasting. But I was chained to my life, my partner, my work, my commitments, my vision of what things should be like, and I was bound to my reluctance to reveal myself as a failure. I became not particularly happy, but at no point did I pause to think that maybe in remaining in my prison, in choosing to hold on to that unhappiness, I was making those around me unhappy as well.
Four years ago, right around this time, I was breaking free from that self-constructed prison. Emancipation wasn't quick or clean or easy, but at no point did I deviate from the end goal of divorce and returning to my roots. So many times--especially on relentlessly hot, sunny, lonely Sunday afternoons--my hopes faltered, and I would entertain fears that I would never escape, would never be free.
And then, the freedom came. A new job, a cross-country move, a divorce, a "room of my own", another new job that stretched and challenged me in new, exciting ways. I'm definitely free now; my time is my own; I choose my own company (and perhaps, more than I should, choose no company.) I grow older, possibly more of a loner. Definitely more independent, less eager to surround myself with people or plans that aren't to my liking.
In short, I am reveling in my freedom. And this morning, I awoke to a strange echo of a fear that I didn't know existed, and who knows? Maybe it was just a dream. Or...maybe...alternatively...am I becoming too free? Too entrenched in my own life and preferences, and therefore limited by it?
Imprisoned by it? Chained to it?
Or maybe whatever path we choose in this life is a prison. Even freedom.
