Outside of the Box

In here, you feel very small and very big all at the same time. It is cramped, sometimes dark, sometimes blinding.  There really isn't very good temperature control.  This box did not seem to come equipped with a thermostat - you're either sweltering and huge, so that you're crammed up against all of the walls, or else you're curled in the corner, black on black, trying to find a way to disappear inside yourself.  Either way, you're still in this box. You bang up against the top and get what you want and down against the bottom and feel the lack-rage. You feel the height and the depth of this space. It's large enough that it's easy to believe that this is all you are. In here, your ego breathes in and out and knows itself and its boundaries. There is nothing outside of this box, nothing. Outside of this box is noth--

You step outside of the box when you remember to. It's true that it becomes easier to step outside once you've done it a couple of million times. You watch yourself from your perch rolling around inside that box in your suffering and You say to yourself, "Step out then. It's out here that you want to be. All the good stuff is here. What you need to let go is here. Here, you can breathe as deeply as you want and from here you can see yourself and other people without being disgusted by either."

And though it feels like it's going to die, yourself obeys You (because You are very beautiful) and so it steps out on to the ledge, off the end of the plank, and out into freedom.

A couple more million times, perhaps, for the hesitation to grow yet smaller between the remembrance and the dive out.

Pic by Izarbeltza (CC share-alike)