I had it all wrong.
I was chasing clarity,
but I found freedom.
Freedom came with a hitch:
It’s solitary.
It’s blank.
The promise of fulfillment is empty.
It’s a strange change from conformity and negativity—
to freedom.
The safe spaces of conformity and complacency
aren’t safe anymore.
The comfort zones of chasing and deprecation
just don’t hit like they used to.
It’s strange to see old friends
like scarcity and unworthiness;
they’re strangers now.
In sovereignty there’s aloneness.
The friends who stood by my side and drained my soul
are empty now.
They’re empty,
I’m not.
Without ego,
I’m nothing.
Without ego,
don’t exist.
Without ego,
knowledge is irrelevant.
Without ego,
there’s only feeling.
None of my self-help books warned me that
freedom is blank.
They didn’t tell me that behind the curtain
is nothing.
That the systems will always be there,
but the version of me that played them
is gone.
Nobody warned me that freedom is nothing.
That total freedom has no rules.
That total freedom will require my own map.
Nobody warned me:
that the emptiness of fulfillment,
was just the start.
And when I question where to go,
freedom takes away paths that were drawn before.
For freedom demands that I make my own:
no guides,
no examples,
no frameworks.
The loneliness of freedom is a soft light
waiting to be illuminated.
Freedom is not seeing.
Freedom is embracing blindness.
The paradox of freedom
is that it can be anything.
The eternal question is what to do with it.
Without any answers,
how do I create my own?
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