Some of us are captives. We are imprisoned by the world and even the very bodies in which we live. We have a terrible and insatiable desire for freedom from all that is and all that we are. We express ourselves in a myriad of passions in an effort to exude our existence and find release from our thoughts and emotions. We breathe ourselves out, making heat marks on the windows of the world, and we constantly daydream about how to break the glass and the adventures of escape beyond. Resisting our instincts leaves deep wells of insecurity and knots of anxiety that trap us in a maze of discontentment and indecision. Our minds are busy, our hearts are raw, and we seek, above all things, catharsis.

I was not particularly familiar with the word “catharsis” until recently when I smashed the foggy glass of my most inner prison. Led by a reconnection with my art, I had to relocate my inner voice. I had no idea where I would find it, as it had been so long since I’d listened… Perhaps, I never truly had at all. My search brought me to a point of introspection and eventually self-dismemberment. Anyone who has ever screwed up an assembly can tell that, at some point, the best idea becomes to just take the whole damn thing apart and start over.

As I listened, I honed in on its location and followed the sounds. Soon, I found myself headlong down the rabbit hole called Me. I’m not sure if I jumped. Maybe I tripped and fell. My leading suspicion, however, is that Fate pushed me. Whatever the circumstances of the plunge, they are irrelevant as I tumble to the depths of my soul, through the menagerie of images both lovely and terrifying. I have no idea where the bottom is or what I will find when I get there but, truth be told, it doesn’t much matter because the drop is cathartic.

There is something about being at odds with yourself that forces you to change your paradigm. The path to a new definition is literally mapped by emotional conflict – each one ending, as all conflict does, with resolution. Without said ending, the conflict would simply continue. In order to move forward, one must pass through, first, peril then release. So, like a ragdoll down the hallway stairs, I list as I fall, feeling pain only when I tense against the inevitable impacts. The greater my resistance, the greater the pain, and the greater my peril, the greater the release. Thus leading me to the conclusion that the less I resist and the more I welcome the discomfort of self-evolution, the less painful and more cathartic the experience becomes.

The question one would ask is, of course, what is at the bottom? Just another paradigm, I suppose; another set of windows to breathe upon and tap at while I build up the courage and that which I will free myself of in the next plummet. An endless series of falls, each one a search for weightlessness, for split seconds of perfect freedom, for the enrapturing moments of catharsis… Such is the journey of the captive soul.

In many ways, writing helps this process because it gives me a chance to deepen my experience by forcing me to put my thoughts and feelings into words. It makes me look at the central issues of each conflict and expand them with focus and meaning. If I can transfer what I am feeling into a set of words, I am naming the parts that contribute to the whole, breaking down the pieces, and examining how they interact with one another. I am essentially explaining it to myself. What I discover about myself and the conflict are not always what I wish to be the case and it often tightens the knot of peril, but when I consider the heightened release I find it is usually a worthwhile exchange – even if it is less than comfortable.

The interesting thing about being among these captive souls, about catharsis in general, and about living this experience as an artist is the inescapable nature of these circumstances. Play as I might at suburban housewife, at mother and baker of kindergarten party treats, I understand that at the core of me, I am indeed this first. I can take on duties, titles, and responsibilities of all types, but at the end of the day the thing I desire most is to sit and write and breathe against the glass… tap, tap, tapping away and dreaming of how the shards will fly as I break through to the next drop – free and cathartic.