independence for me

We just celebrated our 47th year of Independence. Two days have passed and the triangular red, white and black flags seem to flap our national anthem in the breeze. But what do we know of independence? Besides a date, and our national flag flying high, when the majority of the population flying high on depression and bad politics, hospitals with not enough beds and doctors with private institutions offering said patients care at a cost, while we pay health surcharge every month. But this is our Independence we raise flags for, stand in lines to watch the military parade….yiepeeeee we’re free. But free from what? I still can’t sleep with my bedroom window open, I still can’t walk the street holding my lover’s hand, and I still can’t afford to buy a house without a spouse. But happy 47^th all the same.

Some believe, and I did at some point in time, that freedom is a state of mind, and to an extent it is. As a man thinks therefore he is…but one can’t pretend that obstacles don’t exist, counteracting all the positive mantras and beliefs that I greet the day with. And I haven’t stopped believing, but I’m slowly becoming a realist, after a long time of being optimistic about life and love.

An ex once told me that I am a dreamer, and I remember how much that hurt…I guess it’s the same reason I believed that we would always be friends, and not pass as strangers, as we do now. Maybe there was never any love there to begin with; maybe I wasted nearly a decade of sharing a space. And it just goes to show sometimes we think we know someone, but we really don’t. Strangers parading as friends, and as lovers, only in so much as it satisfy their needs. Right now I am trying to free my heart from becoming bitter, but how do I give someone else so much of me again. There is a Tracy Chapman song that says something like “Next time, I’ll keep a little love for myself, enough for my heart to mend…” So I’ve buried some seeds of self love, waiting for them to catch and bear before I venture fought into loveville again…but this time it will be different. So in the mean time ‘happy independence’ country, and ‘happy independence self.’