Freedom vs. Confinement

Freedom is all about options and choices. Confinement is about no choices. I have spent time in Riker’s Island and mental institutions and there is nothing to choose. Your meals are picked, what time you sleep is picked and the TV shows you watch are picked. Freedom means you are allowed to make mistakes and I have made every mistake in the world.

I have been a true addict in terms of non-stop sex and know nothing about intimacy monogamy, commitment, attachment and love. But at least I had the opportunity in my freedoms to fail. I failed again and again but at 71 (my birthday was January 10th), I am still not dead.

Time will decide whether future choices are good or bad. But at least I know the difference. The excitement for an addict is that your sickness is so overwhelming that you don’t have the freedom you think you do. You become a zombie on autopilot. All my mistakes, all my apologies and all my failures, at least they are mine. I made them. I frankly hope that I have learned something.

The point of censorship, fascism and religions are that these choices are precluded from your palette of choice. The great advantage of freedom is fear, anxiety and always being on the precipice of complete disaster, which I relish.