She thought to herself:
I want willpower.
I want confidence.
I want motivation, certainty, energy, clarity.
A quieter yet stronger voice whispered:
I want dignity.
A decade earlier, she had quit her job and returned to her home country. She knew she had some work to do before her worth no longer rose and fell with the responses of others.
She imagined freedom awaited her.
Instead, she encountered loss.
She learned quickly that before she could become free to be herself, she would first have to become free from everything that wasn't.
Over the next decade, much would be stripped away.
And much would be seen deeply enough to bring her into greater union with her soul.
The one who thought she knew exactly who she was and where she was going realized:
"I'm just a fool like the rest of us."
The enmeshed one realized:
"We're actually not the same person."
The fawning one realized:
"Actually, it's your fault too."
The codependent one realized:
"I can't save you."
The good girl realized:
"Sometimes I'm mean, bad, and difficult."
And many people and beings died.
Enough to rearrange a soul.
Through composting her grief and longing in soils richer than her own, she learned new ways of being.
Pleasure, not just purpose.
Power, not just service.
Desire, not just duty.
She realized the water she had been raised in and swimming in had a name.
Empire.
Gradually, she brought her relationship to worth and witness into better order and balance.
Eventually she began to suspect that dignity had never been absent.
It had merely been obscured beneath everything she had mistaken for it.