I've kicked around the idea for about a month on how to share this story.  The problem is that I haven't been able to wrap my head around what kind of details I wanted to get into or where to start really.  I guess the end makes just about as much sense to me as the beginning: 

So, about a month ago my anklet broke.

That shouldn't be a profound statement to you.  Actually, it shouldn't carry any significance at all, but to me it meant a lot.  I'm not sure where I first got the idea, but somewhere along the line that is this life, I figured that I could carry an idea or thought or prayer with me more easily if it were something physical on my body.  I've a few scars to thank for that revelation, scars that I'll carry with me for a lifetime.  I don't know what the fascination is really.  I just needed a reminder, sometimes I need a constant reminder – that I am alive, or that there are other problems in the world that are bigger than my finances, or school, or work, or me.  I need a reminder to relax sometimes, and other times I need a reminder to remain vigilant.

I guess that each time, each idea, was fairly profound – to me anyway.  And this particular story – this whole ordeal – is not something that I can easily share, simply because it's so personal.  But I'm trying.  Because it is personal.  It's important to me and I want to give it away.

I remember the night I got my dot.  My buddy August burned his cigarette into the soft flesh of my forehead.  I remember the sizzle that I heard between my ears, and I can remember leaning into the fire like it was going to change my life.  I wore that mark proudly like a newly married man.  And I wore it for months.  I remember coming home from C-bus that Christmas, and all the puzzled looks followed by the puzzled questions as to why I have a burn the size of a quarter on my damn forehead.  I have pictures at my grandma's house with my family – all of them looking rather spiffy and I like a madman with my full beard and wild hair and my burning-red dot.  Still, it's not something that I can call regret.  I think that I am very much a changed individual since those times.  I can't imagine burning my flesh away for the sake of anything, no matter how profound I imagine the cause being.

If my dot, my bindi was a wedding night (and it very much was) – my anklet was an exercise in divorce.  It wasn't a person that I was divorcing myself from, in as much as it was a thought, or series of thoughts that haunted my daily existence.  I can remember tying the rope together – three separate pieces of twine, braided into one chain.  Three because it's a powerful number.  Also because it was my prayer for strength, peace, and clarity of mind – each cord representing one of the three things that I knew I had to be granted if I were to make it through this trying time.  And I knew that it would take time, but I didn't really think about it at that moment.  I had tied pieces of string around my wrist or around my neck before – none of them lasting very long.  Inevitably within a month or so they would get caught on something and breakway, many times without notice.

For more than three years this rope was a part of my being.  I slept with it, ate with it, showered with it.  It was with me when I went to work and when I traveled across the country.  I'm fairly good at knots - one of the talents I picked up from my father – so I was sure about it holding against a regular snag, but I never dreamt that I would carry this thing with me for so long.  I carried it through a lot of emotional turbulence too.  It made it through births and some hard losses and sickness and health.  It was there for me when I needed to ask for guidance.  It was light in times of joy, but it could be a motherfucker too.  There were moments when it was a heavy chain, iron-shackled to my leg, and I would tug on it hoping to gain freedom by simply breaking this token from my body.  But I would not cut it off.  I wasn't yet free.  The ghosts that I wanted needed to leave behind were with me night and day, just like this piece of rope.

And then one day it wasn't there anymore.  It was physically there, alright – my rope had held strong.  But all that it had represented was gone.  The haunts that it had both chained me to and guarded me against had departed.  I don't know when it happened.  I don't know that I did anything to warrant such a departure, although I'm sure I did plenty to make the whole ordeal slower and more painful than need be.  I do know when I came to this part of the realization – riding to Coney Island to see an OtR show.  And I was beaming.  I can't even describe the emotions that I felt that day but I know that I was happy and relieved that I had made it through rather unscathed.

Sadly, it didn't last.  Having that epiphany threw me farther into myself than I've been in months, maybe a year.  For so long now I've simply subsisted – without actually existing.  I haven't experienced the world like I used to.  I don't know when the last time was that kissed the earth like my mother – thanking her for the life she gives to all of us.  And worst of all, I stopped writing.  I felt terrible.  It was like I saved myself from all that anguish only to lose me – the real me – in the process.  I had become an automaton – work.eat.sleep.repeat.  work.eat.sleep.repeat.  work.eat.sleep.repeat.  I thought of nothing worth thinking.  I did nothing worth doing.  I made nothing worth making.  I was simply subsisting.  And as I was thinking about these things, a little more than a month ago, I reached down to tug on my anklet and ask for strength, peace, and clarity of mind and it broke free from my leg and fell to the floor.

I guess I've been kind of dwelling on it ever since.  I don't want to rely on a piece of rope anymore.  I'm glad that I've put my ghosts to rest.  I am a changed individual.  I'm different now and I want to build up a better life than what I had then – if only I can imagine it.  I want to write again, and I am.