The Shawshank Redemption

What an amazing movie. My personal favorite, if you didn't know. It is a wonderful tale of walls, hope, hardship, and, well, redemption. And, in my own way, I can relate.

The Shawshank Redemption is a movie about being imprisoned, about being walled in and trapped. This is an accurate way to describe how I feel, currently. There is no physical force keeping me down, however it feels as if my life is contained and I am trapped here. There are walls all around me; however, I have a door I am free to go through at any time. I leave the confines of my house, but that is not my actual prison. I believe it is this area-these towns-that is my prison, and my walls are mental.

I have lived here most of my life. I have spent a lot of time in the past few years in Greenville. I do not dislike this place; rather, I find a lot to enjoy about it. I know there is so much more to the world though, and I haven't seen anything of it. My prison is the inability to do just that. I've never been far from home, I've rarely been off on my own, and even then never unbridled and free. I want to see this and so many other countries, meet so many people, explore places, do things, all that I am unable to do. And in that way, I am trapped here.

I've spent all my life here. Most of the more recent years- my late teenage/early adult years- have been far less than pleasant, and many things have happened that I would choose to forget if I could. I want to find my Zihuatanejo, my own place with no memory. I want to spend a week, or a month, or a year there. I want to escape for a while, and return a different person. A better person, hopefully, but a more experienced one, a change one, nonetheless.

It is a good thing to hope for this, or to hope period. Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.