The Quiet Kind of Free

I’m not sure there’s any feeling more important to me than feeling free.

I would choose freedom over safety almost every day of the week.
(I’m sure there are a few days in my cycle where I’d choose safety instead… but nonetheless.)

To me, freedom has always been something I feel inside myself — not something I go out and do.
I don’t want to travel — I’m not sure I ever really have.
Every time someone tells me about the beauty and magic of a place I must go, I think,
“Yeah, I’m sure it’s wonderful,”
but I just don’t feel the pull inside me.

My own gravitational force pulls me right down to the ground under my feet.
It wants me anchored like a rock to my own home.
My own freedom beckons me to stay close.
To move slowly.
To wander and meander my own property.

Freedom doesn’t mean more variety — not of people, or foods, or experiences.
To me, freedom feels like simplicity.

The same soups and stews.
The same biscuits and teas.
The same views out the same windows that somehow get more beautiful each time I look.

Freedom is giving up chit chat and social obligations.
Freedom is deciding the Gregorian calendar no longer reigns over my life —
and instead, following a calendar written by the moon. One with thirteen cycles. One my body follows naturally, without any coercion.

And maybe the wildest freedom I’ve ever tasted is the kind that lets my internal world flow —
uncontained, untempered, un-titrated.

The freedom to not dull my sharpest edges.
The freedom to not suppress my intense desires.
My neediness.
My inconvenient parts.
The freedom to not be better.
To not be digestible.
To just let myself be me.

The greatest gift I’ve ever been given —
other than my kids and my chickens —
is the gift of seeing myself.
Knowing myself.

It’s the only thing I’m insatiable for:
Myself.

I want only what brings me closer to me.
Only relationships that deepen my connection to myself.
I will not carry what obscures my view.

Because I am free.
And I can choose.
And I am all I really want.