What binds us

We are all bound... 

By circumstances of our birth, circumstances of our lives, responsibilities, needs, desires, repercussions of past deeds.

What binds you?  What keeps you on your current path?  Contentment with your lot?  Acceptance of what you cannot change?  Unwillingness to risk changing what you can?

If we are all bound in one way or another, are we ever truly free?  Would we even want to be?  Freedom within that which holds and grounds you can sometimes feel like a bird free within its cage.  Confines upon confines, but what are we without them?  Free or aimlessly adrift?

Freedom is never absolute.  If not bound by convention and society, we are all still bound by our own bodies and minds, by what we are capable of achieving or what we believe we're capable of. 

What allows one to feel truly free is not a complete lack of constraints, it is the ability to live and thrive within them.

Body v. Mind

I've been feeling a little off today and the irritant of it has been a festering burr under my skin.  All right, the red-eye flight across the country and the subsequent twelve hours in the airport before getting on another cross country flight back didn't exactly help.  It's more than that though.

I have been living with this sense of disconnect for a while now and today I suddenly identified it.  My mind and my body, or rather what my body can do, seem to have fallen out of sync.  Let's call it a misalignment of expectations. 

I remember feeling like that before...  As a teenager I gained a lot of weight and while I'm sure it was traumatic on my body, it did a complete number on my head.  Up to that point I have always been too thin and I never gave a single thought to what I ate.  Size and weight were just not on the list of things I worried about.  Then, in a space of a single year I had ballooned to twice my weight and I can think of few other experiences in my life that were as traumatic as that.  Logically I realize that it didn't happen overnight, but that's what it felt like.  I went to bed as a skinny twelve year old and woke up the next morning as a depressed and grossly overweight thirteen year old.

The mental damage of that transformation took more than a decade and a half to repair.  The adage "what doesn't kill us makes us stronger" may be true and I may appreciate it now, however, at the time I would have gladly chosen to die rather than battle on.

That sense of a disconnect between what I expect my body to do and look like and the reality is what I'm experiencing today.  There are things I expect my body to be able to do and tolerate.  Things that I don't want to have to think about, let alone be confronted with incontrovertible evidence that it just ain't happening.

Have I mentioned that I'm neither accepting of nor gracious in defeat?

Let's see what I can do to get things straightened out again.  After all, who doesn't love a challenge on the eve of a new year?

Games we play

It's been over a year since my last post... but I don't want to talk about why it's been so long since I've written or why I'm slowly starting to write again.  What I want to talk about is my (relatively) new toy.

That's my toy, in the picture for this post.  It's even more beautiful in real life.  When J bought it for me, I couldn't put it down.  I kept taking it out of my pocket and caressing the handle, tracing the rivets and grooves with the tip of my finger.  Pressing it against my arm and seeing how hard I can press the tip before the sensation turned from warmth to a sting to an almost unbearable pinch of skin against the blade.

I've drawn lines and designs on my body, gritting my teeth as I painstakingly trace the same damn pattern over and over to make it stay, to make it more than fleeting, less than permanent.  Scarring isn't quite what I'm after.  I'm after the challenge of the act itself.  The burn that follows a few minutes later.  The tenderness to the touch.  The sudden jump the next morning when the hot water hits the spot in the shower and wakes me up more effectively than the whiny alarm clock.

I fell in love with that knife the moment I held it in my hand.  We were in Cabela's in Lacey, WA, wandering around the store, not looking for anything in particular.  I wasn't looking for a knife, not seriously anyway.  At the row of display cases, I got lost in dozens and dozens of knives.  Paralyzed by the variety of choices, I couldn't settle on any to look at.  Eventually, when the salesman came up, I pointed at one, almost at random.

Can I see that one, please?

The first one I picked up was one that I thought I'd like the most - it was a riff on leatherman tools - all tidy curves and air pockets, but it felt insubstantial and flimsy in my hand.  Hollow and empty, it was like holding a walnut shell after the nut was eaten.  The second had a gorgeous deep blue handle.  Ok, I'll admit it, I chose it solely for its looks, but it felt too heavy and clunky and the straight blade reminded me of a kitchen knife.  I was on the verge of walking away when the man behind the counter pulled out another knife similar to one I already had out, but slightly smaller.

Try this one, he said...  He flipped it open and handed it to me.  I didn't know what I was looking for until my fingers closed around the handle.  I was in lust.

With the man behind the counter watching, I couldn't do what I really wanted...  I couldn't put the edge against my skin, press it in and slowly draw a line along the length of my forearm, watching tiny droplets bloom along the newly carved stem.  Instead, my hands trembling, I turned the knife over and over in my palm, caressing the blade where I didn't dare caress the edge.  It felt light and solid and I just couldn't put it down.  

So, what are you looking to do with the knife?  

The salesman was clearly worried about the sale.  He needn't have been - there was no way I was leaving without that knife.  But what to answer?

It's a toy... I finally told him.  He seemed a bit confused, but given what I was thinking, I was not likely to give him any more details.  And then, after a brief hunt for a box and a few minutes in line, we were out of the store and the knife was mine.

My toy.  My beautiful, shiny, totally inappropriate toy.