you are free

I shackle myself with bonds of my own imagination. Not that I began that way. I think what happens is that well meaning adults tell a child "no" so many times, explain how things are not done or are shameful, that the child internalizes this message. This message in place authority is never questioned. Even rebellion is a hat tip to authority - to the bonds. But if they don't exist and there's no good reason for them, then it is a matter of recognition and putting them off.

Too often we take off shackles only to be recaptured by something else. Call it a signifier. No sooner do you leave X behind and all it stands for, then you find yourself in allegiance with Y, X's nemesis. The trick is to escape the polarity.Understand what your ultimate concern is. Spend time discovering your agency and setting your boundaries. Feel the liberation of saying "no". As an artist, there are all kinds of groups that say they love to have me, but what I observe in them is that it ends there, at being had. If you feel that you are merely the possession of a group, then you need to get out. 

We are told that it is selfish to care for ourselves. We are told that love requires having no boundaries. And so some of us just take it. I found that when I moved on, it became as if I'd never been there. Interesting how these bits of stupidity take on symbolic valance - we are caught. Deleuze describes this as the black hole of subjectivity. Thinking rhizomatically, in terms of drawing a line of flight, neither the tree and its validation through procedure and consensus nor the sect, the hole, with its validation of life as a battle.

Be careful of how others define you. If you are mad and frustrated, chances are that the constructions you've applied to your ego in order to please the others has failed. This is not the time to double down; this is the time to leave.