QUESTION:

What do you think about more than anything else?

Freedom. From those around me for me, and for them... from me. Freedom all around. Freedom to wander aimlessly- not bound to this or him or that or them. I think about it constantly. I work through the logistics; the emotional upheaval, the necessary figurative and other deaths I must factor in and endure and inflict in order to attain it.

I think about the silence of me. Not the many chattering selves each imparting the required words I shuffle through each day; I think of every placid hour gently flowing into the next- without angst or rush or demands on its time.

It's more of an ache really: To be absolved of people and situations and dependencies. To stand upon a hill alone and breathe deep and swing arms around in blessed empty space- containing only me... and nature.

Yes, I know. We all need people.

But some of us (maybe just one of us) cannot be contained. I come inbuilt with the next flight preset. With the next free-fall already scheduled in the diary.

I recall once, pleading in a poem:

"And as your final gesture,

Please burn my parachute."

No one's been able to do that. Freedom - the thought of it - prevails over everything else inside me.

I spent a year in my late twenties living alone. I opted out of everything and everyone. (I do this periodically. Walk away without living a footprint for anyone to follow, no matter how chummy we may have been.) This period was spent mostly in silence- bar the dutiful weekly calls to family and the odd drive over to their place. I never went anywhere else except to replenish supplies and visit bookstores. I didn't work; I lived off someone's generosity.

I remember reading about three hundred books during that time. Picking one up and not putting it down till I reached THE END. I know this because that's when I seriously began building my library. I also wrote prolifically but alas, all those words are lost to me.

But what I most remember about that year... it was the closest I got to that ideal held in my head: An almost total detachment from people and their needs and expectations.

I don't think of loneliness as associated with freedom. I like me. I can live alone without feeling incomplete. I have lived alone, even when living with others, all of my life. When I am near that ideal, I feel a curious peace. When I am far from it- I seek to return, to resume the search for it.

Someone once said: "You seek death."

"No. I seek an unencumbered life."

"Go be a hermit then."

"You don't have to go anywhere in order to be!"

"You're crazy." 

Maybe... Or maybe I can only find this freedom in another person. And what I am really seeking is not freedom- rather the longing to want to stay.

What occupies your thoughts the most? (Forget mine!)