Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Stockholm Syndrome

Have you ever been trapped? Like, truly trapped? And not the convenient kind of trapped, wherein you don't really have a choice in the matter. I am talking about being trapped and seeing escape routes around every corner, and yet you continue to allow yourself to be kept in a place against your will.

Tonight, it's raining. It's pouring. I won't burden you with imagery, because everyone knows what rain is. If not, I fear for the amount of fruits and vegetables available to you. I think it might finally be Spring. The season of new birth, the shedding of skin, the stretching and yawning after months of hibernation. Spring is a time to move. Time to escape from whatever it is that has trapped you the past few months.

I'm being cryptic, I know. So let me get to the point: I need to leave this place.

Kansas is a minimum security prison: sure, they give you enough food, treat you relatively fairly, and provide you with ample free time, but it's still captivity. There is still a free world out there beyond the walls. The problem with this prison is that the walls are transparent. There's no barbed wire keeping you in, or riflemen manning the towers,the doors stand wide opened. There is just you, standing, looking out, and despite some of the inmates accepting you into their inner circle, and the excitement that every Wednesday is fried chicken for lunch, you still know that it is not freedom. Heh, maybe it's the lack of conjugal visits that reminds me... Metaphorically speaking, of course.

I know all this, and yet, I cannot bring myself to step outside the gates. Cannot throw my shoulders back, stand tall, and walk straight out, without fearing what will happen. You always hear of those chronic inmates who keep going back to jail because it's the only world they understand. Well, it's dramatic, but I sympathize.

I feel like if there was someone or something standing outside the gates, beckoning me to leave, to take that step and not look back, then surely I would have no problem walking out of there with my head held high. But there is not. There is only me. Me and my damned stockholm syndrome.

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