The first to die was Religion.
At birth I was given the string to a helium filled balloon. I was told this was the safest, best way to navigate life — above all the spiritual dangers of the world. And as an obedient kid, I listened.
Never, ever look down, they said. So, I held tight, didn’t let go. Floating ever higher. Er…maybe just holding ever tighter.
Eventually, my wrist became fatigued. My muscles and joints sore from how tightly I held on. But never, ever looking down. Never feeling safe enough to let go.
As I grew, the persistent ache started to make the thought of plunging to my spiritual death from however high I was seem more and more pleasing.
The same words played obsessively in my mind, “I’m loosening my grip…I’m starting to slip…I’m afraid I’ll shatter like glass!” Immediately my grip would tighten.
Every day.
I’m loosening my grip…I’m starting to slip…
I’m loosening my grip…I’m starting to slip…
I’m loosening my grip…I’m starting to slip…I’m afraid I’ll shatter like glass!”
Tighten.
Until one day….
I loosen my grip,
I start to slip,
Still afraid I’ll shatter like glass.
But I opened my hand, let go of the string and,
GASP!
It was just grass.
The second to die was my marriage.
Through tangled balloon strings, perceived values, and cultural expectations…when I let go of my string and felt the grass between my toes for the first time, a lot of other things — and people — became disentangled.
This was one of the harder parts. Letting go sounds easy…but letting go of something other people value scares them. They take it personally. All of a sudden, I was contagious to everyone who still held tightly to their string.
My marriage was built on the foundation of the string and the balloon. Once I let go, there was nothing else to hold onto.
The third to die were my values.
But my values were fucked. My values taught me that I was exceptionally special. Chosen. That *this string* was only for a few, select people. That floating above them made me better than them.
I didn’t drink coffee. I didn’t drink alcohol. I didn’t engage in sex outside of marriage. I didn’t get tattoos. I didn’t even watch R-rated movies. This made me pure (squee). Which made others who did these things not pure.
My *values* were judgmental by default.
When I let go of my spiritual string, the first value to disentangle from my spiritual web was the R-rated movie…in the form of The 40-Year-Old Virgin. As a 23 year old, it resonated. It was the first time I’d seen that many sexualized tits in a movie. I felt both free and horrified.
Next, I got a tattoo. In the 6th grade I drew a little flower on my hip and proclaimed I would one day get a tattoo. Those around me said I would feel Satan’s Power over me, or at least the lack of the presence of the Holy Ghost if I didn’t adhere to all the rules of The String. And I walked outta that tattoo shop feeling…like myself. Liberated. I tested the cultural norms I had been taught…and I won.
Then, I drank alcohol. But no one had given me any advice about how to drink responsibly — only not to drink at all. So I downed a whole bottle of White Beringer Zinfandel in about 20 mins because being drunk looked fun…
Being that drunk was not fun.
Once I popped the coffee-cherry (which is now incorporated into my morning ritual), I began to engage in extra-marital sex. The last value to fall.
At first the idea of being a “licked cupcake” or a “chewed piece of gum” dominated my mind. I was slutty. I was going against everything I was taught. After all, fornication is the Sin Next to Murder in Mormonism.
Eventually, the imprint from that part of the string had faded. Leaving me to be an almost-normal, coffee drinking, alcohol indulging, rated R movie watching, sexually empowered, full person. With values that serve me and the people around me, regardless of their lifestyle or choices.
But first, I had to die.
I was the fourth death.
I held onto my spiritual string for the better part of 23 years. So tightly that it left imprints that took time to fade. It was my entire identity. Everyone around me — family, friends, people I worked with — validated my beliefs with their own.
Who would I be without my string?
The burden of The String began to cloud my mind and make me sick. I was in despair — and could not see the light at the end of the tunnel. When I learned that there was nothing beneath me but grass, I felt a profound betrayal and sunk into a deep, desperate depression.
As a strong minded, relatively self-aware 23 year old — I no longer knew who I was. I was nothing. I was no one. I used to be exceptionally special. Chosen. And now I wasn’t.
The imprints from the string slowly faded, leaving a faint scar (in the form of anxiety and thinking errors). But when I died…when my worst fear came true and I let go of that string, my death was…gentle…
No fire and brimstone. No thunder and lightning supplemented by the boom of God’s voice damning me. No guilt.
The depression faded, and like the worn out analogy of the phoenix, I was reborn as myself from my own ashes. And I saw that I was exactly the same…but better.
