The Chains of Identity
I stand alone, frozen in place,
by the weight of identity placed upon my shoulders.
Chains around my neck;
I wish I could take them off.
Wait, I can!
I have the strength to lift them up;
to take them off and cast them aside.
Expectations forced upon me
by parents,
by friends,
by colleagues,
by enemies,
by others.
With one great realisation, one beautiful introspection,
I take control and throw them away
to reclaim myself, whoever that is.
So the journey begins, and what a journey it is;
Of sexuality and introspection,
society and self,
ethics and economy.
“Who am I?”, I ask.
The question drives me forward.
As I go on, I look all around
and see people still struggling, as I was before.
I try to assist with words and support,
to use what I know, my privilege, to help.
But, as with Mjolnir, I cannot lift their burden for them.
The responsibility of claiming their power is theirs alone.
Yet others I see who are very like me.
We talk for a while, and share mutual glee.
We walk for a while along the same road,
but before long our paths diverge.
A chasm between us which I will not cross,
for I see what happens to them.
I weep, for their journey ends here.
I watch them slow down, I watch them stop dead.
At a crossroads with countless ways to proceed.
Others arrive from along those very roads;
What a wonderful place to be!
Yet there at the crossroads, off to one side,
just a bit too far to reach from the path,
is something that terrifies me to my core.
More chains.
All coiled up in a neat little pile,
as though someone laid them there for us to take.
Metal links polished to such a shine.
We can see our faces in them.
Curiosity beckons. We step from the path.
We pick one up. The weight feels familiar.
As we touch it, a new link forms on this and the others.
We drape it around ourselves, again, and again.
The chains fit. Of course they do.
We feel secure. Protected. Validated, as our companions do the same.
Experiences shared,
yet chains they remain.
We smile,
for these are the chains we have chosen.
Perhaps it was never a choice.
Perhaps these chains were always ours.
For did the path not inevitably lead here?
Don’t all paths lead here? Maybe this isn’t a crossroads,
but the end of the line.
We were always this way.
The journey ends.
As many have said, and still say today,
it is not the destination that matters but the journey itself.
That path that we take
with every single choice that we make.
So why does the journey ever have to end?
Why do we stop and say “Yes, this is me!”,
“This is who I am!”,
“Who I always was!”,
“Who I’ll forever be!”
How can we say this, when “I” barely exists.
Do we not write our own stories, each and every day?
Why must the plot change, while the characters stay?
“I” is fluid for us all, just to different degrees,
and while others reject this, I say it proudly:
That I am who I am now,
I was who I was before,
I will be who I will be later
But “I” has changed, is changing, and will change again.
As I decide.
A crossroads I may reach, but never again
will I take up the chains of identity.
I will continue on, simply for the sake of moving.
One person’s forward is another’s behind.
Our experiences mark and change us
in ways deeper than we can yet say.
And that is ok.