Bird Cage

I woke up this morning and told my family to find me a rich husband so that I can just quit my job, quit school and become a housewife and a mother/ goat herder. I wake up with crazy notions of mini trips to the desert, popping up tents, and living out of the back of my car for a couple of years. Disappearing into the wilderness and only coming down for food like wild animals, sounds pretty good. My crazy notions get shot down by the thought that I am a frail human being with nothing to live off of. I could certainly get a job when I needed one in order to feed myself. I could save my money and buy a teardrop trailer, attach that thing to the back of my KIA Soul and "hit the road Jack!" Alas, again my notions are crazy.

I would be certifiably insane to go on such an adventure due to the complete dependence I have on a little refrigerated bottle of medicine called Insulin. It is the bane of my existence to have a broken organ. (My pancreas went awol on me.) Some days it's easier to accept. Other days, I don't want to live if this is how I have to live. Restricted like an exotic caged bird. Still living, still eating, sleeping and living a normal life, but never outside of its cage. Watching the world and all the other birds fly, soar. sit atop the trees and marvel at the creation that God has made, while I sit on my bench, on my perch, eating myself to death, and learning to do tricks so that at least someone will look at me in my cage and notice the difference between me and them.

Out of fear of embarrassing my parents, I restrict myself. I restrict my comments, and thoughts so as not raise extremely touchy conversations and pep talks about how I can do anything I want to......(So long as it doesn't have any sort of risks.) It's a lie. I do my tricks and the things to be expected of a caged bird. I have not come across a situation where I could do anything I wanted without risking some aspect of my health issues. Much like some of the rebellious cancer patients I have read about,  sometimes I want to just mimic my pancreas and go awol. Rebel against what my biology is saying and just live.. Alas, I am too smart for that as well and too considerate of all the things my parents did to keep me alive. They struggled so very hard to keep me alive and well. Therefore, I take care of myself. It's not for me. If it were just me, alone in this world, and thank God it isn't, I would just run rampant. I would still take care of my diabetes, but I would take some risks in my life too! Oh! What risks I would take in the event that my body wouldn’t fight me for it.

I feel so depleted of my stores of excitement. Or perhaps, it’s that I’m too tired of the current crazy. This crazy isn’t the same drug that I became addicted to as a child. There is a chemical missing in my life and I have attempted to fill my cravings with every kind of other drug. Like a bird eating seed instead of the worm. There is a need to fly you see. To get high. Not off of the kind of drug that puts you in the hospital; it’s the kind of drug that changes your life, that takes you to the next level. Much like cave divers. I want to dive deep into life and fly high above it at the same time. Diving down deep lifts you up high. Isn’t that an oxymoron? Or a contradiction of some kind? That was also a rant. You must admit, there is some truth behind the ranting. Isn't there?

There’s a confusion that happens in the bird cage. You don’t go hungry, you never go cold, people come and bring you treats, and you are living just fine, but there is something about being behind the bars… There is something about living satisfied that is beyond physical needs. That is why we have such a highly depressed population. This is why food, drugs, substances and sometimes even people, can’t make you feel better about your life. That’s why the rich are never satisfied. The rich are still not free. The chemically high are still without joy. 

This begs the final question that I am trying to answer; can a caged bird still find joy? If so, how? Does God show himself to you while you are still caged? Is the cage that prevents your flesh separate from the cage that inflicts your soul? Is that cage a matter of mind? Is it a matter of spirit? How do we separate ourselves from the perpetual cage that we are in? What is the answer to separating mind and soul from body, from flesh?