It’s a small trunk. Brown and battered, with leather straps carefully buckled tightly closed. It contains parts of me: my dreams; my hopes; pieces of me that were criticized, belittled, mocked, made fun of; hurts and lessons from my life experiences. I placed them in the box to survive; cut off pieces of me and who I am/dream of being to survive my life experiences. My whole life to this point has been about survival. Being invisible, not standing out, to avoid being mocked or hurt. Pushing all that is me into a box with leather straps, so that I can survive. The box has been buried deep, the map destroyed, so that I can never find it.
But now I want to find it. I don’t want to just survive life. I want to live it. Feel it. Experience it – the highs and the lows – to the fullest. I want to open up my little trunk and air out all of the pieces I put inside it. I want to take out each piece, examine it, relive the joy of it, lovingly caress it. But how do I find something I determined never to open? How do I find my pandora’s box of treasures so that I can once again live fully? The map is gone. The box is deeply buried within. How do you find a path you purposefully erased?