Emancipate Yourself From Mental Slavery, None But Ourselves Can Free Our Mind

I dream of a noble life far beyond my reach. All of these quotes and songs and movies about passion and following your heart and living life to the fullest remind me of how I've failed to make my days what I wanted them to be. College is supposed to be a time of complete freedom, but with each passing moment I feel my life caving in on me. I feel my innocent faith in things beginning to fade from me. I feel the world getting that much colder. I just don't have a grip on my life at all.

The possibilities are endless. I can really do whatever I'd like right now, but the freedom scares me. I'm scared to figure out what I want out of life. I'm scared of making all the wrong choices. I'm scared that I'll spend too much of my life being scared to move forward. I feel stagnant in my freedom because in essence, I can't allow myself to be free. Jim Morrison said "expose yourself to your deepest fear. After that, fear has no power, and the fear of freedom shrinks and vanishes. You are free." Yet another quote that speaks to my soul, but that I can't seem to put into practice. I don't know how to stop being afraid of life.

I thought about his death for so long. It haunted me for reasons I can't even define. It makes sense that I would think about him, cry for his end, cry for my loss. It makes sense that it would haunt me, but it was more than the thoughts of him lying on his dorm room floor in his blood. It was more than the fear that I had overlooked his sadness, the endless "what if" and "if only" scenarios I've played over and over in my head, the guilt I felt for not seeing his pain. It was more than sadness for the loss of a friend. It was gratitude.

His death made me so painfully aware of how much I wanted to live. Maybe that sounds so selfish, but his death changed my life in such a profound way, that I found myself saying thank you when I sat in my car staring up at the sky, speaking to him in the heavens. I found myself knowing that I would be ok, something I hadn't thought was true even before the news of his death. I was going to be alright. Through the tears and pain of knowing he was gone, I was so struck by the fact that I wasn't. I'm not gone. I'm here and alive and ok. In that moment of recognition, it was as if the earth suddenly burst open and everything within it blazed with light. Everything was made so sublimely beautiful.

It's a beauty that follows me now, that hangs in the trees with the changing leaves and dances on the wings of birds. It's a beauty that reminds me of him. I think of his song, his blue eyes, his smile. I think of the card I gave him on his twentieth birthday, the drunken night we waited outside for pizza together in the blistering cold, the early morning we sat around his fireplace, warming ourselves from our winter swim. I think of our goodbye, and how I had no idea it would be our last. I feel sadness, but it's different than it was before, changed with time. I look up at the sky above and I smile at him. It may seem lame, but I really do believe he's up there. I find myself thanking him for things like a beautiful day or a precious animal sighting or a sudden rush of joy. I find myself happier when I talk to him.

Of course I would be happier if he were still alive, but his death was so important to me in a way. His death added meaning to my life. He gave me such a phenomenal gift, where when I think of him, I know that I will be ok. I know that my life is beautiful. I know that I can go on. I can, even for just a short while, stop fearing life and finally be free. That freedom makes life worth living, makes that noble life I dream of seem just a little bit more within reach.