let's see what happens

Keep returning to the image of the wolf chewing off her leg to escape the trap. Feels like that's what I have done/am doing with my family: Escaping the 'trap' of my family role is so essential to my survival that I have no other choice.

So I do what I have to do. In a way, it simply feels like, What happens if I do this? Like, Ok, here are several 'choices'. You've already tried the other one; tried the path of 'good girl, do what's expected'. It was seriously fucking you up; was killing you, whether anybody outside of you can actually perceive that fact is beside the point. You're the one who has to live in here, with you, inside these feelings. You're the one who has to make the choice: should I stay or should I go. It seemed clear to me that 'stay' = death; 'go' = life, or at least the possibility of same. Hope. Potential. Go toward the light, grasshopper, and I don't mean the one at the end of the tunnel, or the one they talk about in near-death experiences. I'm talking about growing toward the light of hope, the way a blade of grass grows, simply, toward the sun.

And not to make it sound as if I take this choice lightly; it's just that, once the agonizing is done, once the choice is made, one simply has to move on. The outcome will reveal itself in time. Hopefully, I have not made a choice that is as dire as chewing off a leg; hopefully I will soon find some metaphor that... wait just a goddamn minute. I've just realized that the societal 'shoulds' have leaked into my brain again while I wasn't looking. 'Put on a happy face'. Fuck that shit - it's the same ol', same ol', Don't bother me with your problems, kid, only dressed up as fancy, NewAge (pronounced like 'sewage') bullshit.

Ok - lather, rinse, repeat. Each lesson will be repeated until learned. Etc.

So it's society, and perhaps my family, as my up-close and personal representatives of same, who insinuate the 'wolf-chews-off-leg-to-escape-trap' meme into my head. Uh huh. Ok.

Now what? Find new meme, grasshopper, one that works for you. Second verse, same as the first means you haven't escaped the cage yet. You've stuck your head out, looked around, not sure it's safe out there. Frying pan, fire. Which to choose? The known tigers inside the cage, or - what? It's beyond the edges of the map, or as the old-timers used to say, Here be dragons. The unknown.

Stepping off the map.