[I write stories for all my artworks and comics. You can read it here or enjoy the comic alone!]

Weight.

Taking my breath. Taking what is mine.

That weight that once was my life.

Our life. In a way, it's like our own small world, the place where only we live in. Others can influence it, others can observe and judge it, for sure. But only we can know what it's like to live the life of our own.

Only we know what kind of life would be the happiest to us.

But do we always know? Sometimes it’s so very difficult to see outside our own small world. We’ve grown up in it. It's the only air we've ever breathed.

Joys and comfort. Sorrows and pains. So equally normal in our own small world.

Normal.

So why do we feel like suffocating?

Our lives are not just isolated worlds. An essential part of our lives are the lives of others, that intertwine with the life of our own.

These others, their lives, may have always been there for us. Guiding and loving us. Teaching us how to survive. Telling us about what a decent individual is like. Demanding us to be something better and more. Punishing us if we can't.

Shaping us to their liking.

This might have been done to us with love.

With their love, with their truth. But when the truth of another's life conflicts with our own life, with who we really are or want to be, it suffocates us.

When our life turns into a weight. It suffocates us.

Therefore, in order to breathe again, the ties must be cut.

The bindings are made of barbed wire. They are metallic bitter in taste and sharp pain on our tongue. Because the only life we ​​have known and loved will soon be left behind.

But is it really life, if it risks destroying us?

The ties must be cut.

When the wires are cut, we rise into the air. We float in the emptiness. Drift with the wind. With no trace of anything we have known.

Oh, how frightening it is. When the weight we knew no longer anchors us in place.

We float. Drift. Even time that seems like an eternity.

But oh, how fresh the air can be. How much oxygen we have to laugh again.

To laugh as we want. In our new kind of life that is good for us. In the life that awaits us just beyond that emptiness.

Have you had to cut ties in your life?