Freeing Rapunzel — Karla Gonzales

For people like her things are not as easy as a yes or no. She is not that simple. She has to find a way to commune with herself first, to make sense of the world she lives in. Her view of things is more magnified and she experiences the world internally, perhaps that is the curse that comes with her complexities. There has to be some level of inner processing before she can take a step forward. “Wiggle your big toe,” she whispers to herself. “Peel yourself from the linens, you wimp.”

“Wait!” She takes a deep breath. Inhaling the winter air that blows into her lungs. Why can’t I just be like the oblivious, those who walk through life unscathed, unbothered by its perils? Truly, ignorance is bliss.

She is reliving the nightmare all over again. Is she not already desensitized by it? Not yet. She knows when she is ready, for strength and courage come with some level of madness. Like how firefighters step into burning buildings, or how skydivers jump off planes. One ought to tap into the level of insanity involved in being indifferent to the outcome of risk. And tonight she is still downloading, tapping into the inner power that got her this far in the first place, that version of herself who can scrap off an entire manuscript just because she understood that the outcome no longer matters, for she has already done her part and made peace with herself.

She is Rapunzel who had been trapped in that tower for months. Its walls protected her, its familiarity she made her home but deep down inside it had also held her captive to her fears. The fear of the unknown.

What life awaits her down below? She did her best to get to this point. She may live or die from the plunge, but either way, she will finally and truly be free.

Tonight, she combs her hair. “Give me strength, O Lord.”

Fin.

This literary piece is an analogy of one’s frailties, which portrays how there is no true freedom when we live in the paralysis of fear and denial. It represents how real freedom can only be achieved by facing difficult situations as we spiritually prepare ourselves for outcomes. This narrative resembles the phase in life where the waiting is finally over, and it is time to let go and brace for impact. A potentially painful but also liberating experience, facing the end of a chapter is a necessary step so that we can move forward in the next direction. Otherwise, like Rapunzel, we become stagnant by living in the prisons of our minds.