Freedom as a Prison
In his cell he discovers that absolute freedom is the harshest sentence
They have given me a great deal of time now, and time is the cruelest of all liberties.
In this cell I am free to think whatever I wish, and the freedom presses on me like a wall.
I once wrote that man is condemned to be free, admiring the phrase as one admires a chandelier.
I did not know then that condemned was the honest word and free merely its glittering disguise.
Every hour I must choose again what to make of these hours, and no one chooses for me.
I cannot my freedom; even the wish to be rid of it is one more thing I freely will.
The of each moment falls on me alone, and there is no institution to accept the parcel.
Outside, men imagine that prison removes their choices; in truth it strips them to the bone.
Here nothing distracts me from the fact that I, and only I, author my next thought.
I had wanted to prove I was free, and the state has answered by leaving me nothing but freedom.
It is an gift, returned to me each morning whether I want it or not.
To be caged is bearable; to be caged and still absolutely responsible is a subtler torment.
I cannot blame the walls for my despair, since despair too is a I keep on choosing.
The chain I feel is not on my wrists but woven into the very of my will.
What is a prison, after all, but a place where you are handed back to yourself entire?
I chose to kill in order to taste freedom; now freedom force-feeds me until I choke.
The absurd, which I once served as a cool doctrine, has become the temperature of my days.
There is no God to , no motive to excuse me, no fate on which to hang the blame.
There is only this: I did it, I need not have, and I must live inside that fact forever.
The truth is that even my remorse, if it comes, will be something I .
I cannot fall into repentance; I can only decide, moment by naked moment, to .
And so the freedom I worshipped has revealed its other face, which is a face of iron.
What I called liberation was a door that, once opened, can never again be closed.
Beyond it lies not a but a desert, level and endless, with no coordinates but my choices.
I walk that desert in a cell nine feet square, and the horizon never comes any nearer.
Perhaps this is the only just punishment: to be sentenced to the very thing I demanded.
The court believes it has caged a criminal; in fact it has merely underlined my condition.
I am not less free tonight than on the afternoon I killed; I am only, at last, unable to pretend.