Friday April 25th, 2025

I am reckoning with my obsession with freedom and no matter what I think, someone else has to give it to me. I don’t have it because somebody doesn't want to give it to me. Someone has to put it in my hands and I do not know what else to do to get it. I have been loving my neighbor as much as I do myself but we are missing the same freedom. I guess if enough of us realize it's missing, we will do something about it. In the meantime, I’ll write, I'll paint, I'll draw, I'll deconstruct, create, build, renew, love, hope, laugh, share, care for, and serve my friend, brother, sister, and neighbor in our shared captivity, until they let us go. Until our freedom is back in our hands.

I'm obsessed because I can’t look away from its absence.

All my experiences are built around the fact that I do not have it.

I have since settled for believing I do… If not now, then before we ever stepped foot off the continent, before borders and nationalism, before black and white.

Or some time in the future,

After everyone has won,

After facing ourselves and each other—acknowledging what we have committed and withheld.