losthero

-Freedom-
Imagine being a 19 year old, female, college student in one of these war torn places of the middle east. Freedom for you may seem to exist, until the limits of your deciscion making allowances are tested. Imagine telling your parents about something you planned to do with a friend from school, only to have them explode into an angry fit and forbid you from not only doing it, but even thinking about it. Then imagine agrueing back and hearing the two people, whom you thought loved you most, threaten you with horrible things, imagine they threaten to take away the "freedoms" you have become so accustomed to.

Now imagine that this is the norm in your culture, imagine hearing about it, 2nd hand, from your friends all along while you grew up. Imagine you always told yourself your family was different. Now imagine how horrifying it would be to realize they weren't. Imagine that all along, for your entire life, freedom was just an illusion, a tool, used by your culture and family to drive you down the path they wanted you to follow. Now imagine there is nothing you can do about it, imagine the helplessness you would feel.

Imagine how closed off, distant, and trapped you would feel.

Imagine, if you can, the feeling of truely having no freedom.


Having the freedom you've known your whole life crumble up and float away on a breeze is perhaps the worst feeling a person can experience. If you are lucky, none of you will ever feel this way, and if you have ever felt this...

I know just how it torments you, it never goes away, and just when it seems to have faded from memory, you are reminded of it and the feeling rushes back anew. Taking away a person's freedom, stealing what makes them who they are, that is the worste crime I can imagine.

"Freedom is not free." -Unknown

This I know to be true, freedom certainly is not free, and in my experience it always comes at great cost. Be grateful for what you have if you are not the one forced to pay for our freedom, be greatful that others are willing to pay for it so selflessly, and be greatful to be free.