On true freedom

 
 

Until you are at peace with your whole self, you will not be free.⁣

Until you are at peace with the darkness, you will not be free.⁣

Until you are at peace with the void, you will not be free.⁣

Until you are at peace with solitude, you will not be free.⁣

Until you are at peace with the ache in your heart, you will not be free.⁣

Until you are free you will try to ignore, numb, and anaesthetise the discomfort.⁣

You will try to run, run, run away from it, only to keep running straight into it.⁣

All your decisions will come as a reaction, a grasping for an escape. ⁣

You will attempt to fill in the silence, fill in the space, fill in the time.⁣

You will reach for lovers, relationships, noise, social media, sugar… desperately seeking relief, only to feed the relentless emptiness in your belly. ⁣

The harder you try to escape, the tighter the grip will become. ⁣

The darkness, the void, the solitude, and the ache are not problems to be solved. ⁣

They are territories to be explored, and befriended.⁣

Spaces to humbly surrender into: hands in the air, head bowing, knees on the floor.⁣

And if grace will have it, you might find yourself softening all the way back home.

 
 
Jeanine Gasser