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Saturday, July 13, 2013

Chains

I've been counting the hours, as if waiting for my own execution. Hours, days, weeks... biding my time, dreading my fate but awaiting sweet relief. I was never read my rights, I guess I put those behind me awhile ago. A priest never came to my chamber, I wouldn't ask for forgiveness, why should I? My friends? You think they would remember me now? My family offered me their sorrow, their feelings, their blessings but nothing stuck to the empty husk my mind once settled into. My consciousness has long faded, it was beaten, tortured and destroyed by the fear and anxiety of my life.

Those people I call family had chained my mind long before my body. I resisted at first, their attempts to persuade me were shrugged off as disgusting and ridiculous. I fought them tooth and nail, even as a child. I would have spat in my face for becoming what I am now. In grade school I never gave resistance a second though, I would fight any enemy big or small. And the big battles? Ha, those are the ones that really meant something, really made you feel alive.

Alas, the odds were against me, I was fighting a sea of monsters with nothing more than a strong spirit. Even the strongest of spirits, the hottest of fires can eventually be put out by this horrid sea, by the rain of ignorance and the cold touch of death. It wouldn't be a swift death, either, it would be like a plague, slowly creeping to your heart, destroying your mind and body before finally delivering the fatal blow.

So, I gave in, I let go, I admitted defeat. And as that first chain clasped onto my body, I felt it was a serpent, I still fought even realizing my struggle was futile. But as the second one went across my back, and the third around my neck I started to find comfort in them. I almost praised them, wished for them. These chains, they kept me alive, they stropped me from self-destruction! I never thought, I never even begun to think I would find such pleasure and comfort within them.

For ten years, I sat in the dark cold cell and I waited. I welcomed more chains, if not for the chains themselves I would have done so with open arms. But that is a bad thought, the chains saved you! How dare you ask for anything more! What do you expect to gain from thinking like that? Tomorrow was the day, if I remembered what enjoyment felt like, I would have told myself to enjoy the time I have left.

The morning greeted me with a cold sweat.  I wasn't greeted by a jailer, no, I woke up in my own bed. The chains were still wrapped around my skin at every possible crack and crevice. When I was moved out of my room I felt I had died a little inside. They took me in and did the unthinkable, what I had feared most.

They buried a key deep within the lock that kept the chains fastened tight around my legs. I couldn't decipher it, was that fear or excitement I felt? Either way it beats the apathy I have felt for this place for far too long. The cold walls of my room, the ugly scenery and the routine of the chains. I came to realize as the chain fell to the ground. Sure, some of these chains made me happy, maybe even saved my life. But whether the chain holds you up or puts you down, a chain is just that: a chain. It will hold you down one way or another, through pleasure or pain. I think it is far past time to get these chains off me, my mind has been in slumber far too long.