"A prison without walls"

I am trapped in a prison without walls. Contained in one place, one thing. I am a slave to my prison, I must maintain it and appease it else it will punish me for my neglect. The idea of escaping excites me but also fills me with fear. Having been trapped for as long as I can recall I have no concept of the world outside my prison, what awaits on the other side? I have been so conditioned by my prison that even when I dream I dream of life only in my prison. My prison controls the information I can get from the outside world, it filters things and provides only what it sees fit to let me know. There could be untold beauty in the world to which I am blindfolded. I hear the shouts and screams from other prisoners in their prisons but I must guess at what they mean for it is the prisons which conduct these transactions and not those contained within.

My prison is also cruel, I am kept in solitary confinement. I have no way to share my understandings and feelings as they are to me. I must write letters in the cumbersome language of the prison which are then broadcast to other prisons where the filtering process begins for them. Oh to be free from these shackles so that I may collectively feel, understand and express. I am so tired of trying to break down these metaphorical walls using the limited tools within them.

I shall serve my term with humility and gratitude and I will not give up my quest for unhindered expression, however clumsily and awkwardly it may spill forth. For I fear that I am the prison and in freeing myself I would no longer be myself, I would be only what other prisoners recall of me, I would become shattered and imprisoned over many other prisons, each one with only fragmented distortions of my expression remaining.

The best we can hope for is to find those who are able to see past the walls, past the exterior of the prison and appreciate the inmate for their qualities. Qualities which are unmeasurable in the world of the prisons such as compassion and love, good will and understanding. For only when we find those to whom expression is not a problem are we able to feel truly free. Unshackled and a person, no longer an inmate.