tangled and twisted beauty of the labyrinth

the maze of life.

“how will i ever get out of this labyrinth?” pudge wondered, saying he wrote his way out. but can i? i’m not sure. maybe i’m still searching for my great perhaps. but the labyrinth of life… i don’t think i’ll ever truly escape it. and maybe i do use the future as a way to escape the present. but i no longer see this labyrinth as something to run from. perhaps it’s the very thing that gives life its meaning. if i hadn’t gone through these struggles, made these mistakes, would i be able to face what i do now? maybe the suffering isn’t something to avoid, it’s part of the becoming.

does the labyrinth of love exist, or is it just some pretentious metaphor i came up with? i don’t think so. yes, the labyrinth of love… the love i gave and the love i received is what shaped me. and i think i could never escape any form of love in my life, even if it was lost somewhere in the middle. i’m a museum of everything i’ve ever loved. and even though i’ve grown to hate some parts of that love now, i couldn’t really escape it. maybe that’s what makes love special. i’m a borrowed piece of everything i’ve ever loved. the people, the memories, the places, the songs, the quiet moments, the ones who left and the ones who stayed. everything i’ve loved lives in me. even the parts i no longer want to carry still stay with me.

i still watch those movies and cry over them, even though they were once recommended by someone i'd rather not remember. i carry borrowed words from people i’ve loved, echoing in the way i speak and write. maybe that’s what love does, it lingers. even when it shifts into something that feels like hate, it doesn’t truly leave. love is tangled, never linear. there is no true escape from the labyrinth of love. we don’t outrun it, we just learn to live with its echoes.

i never hated my family, but i’ve always longed to escape them and build a life that feels like mine. they never truly understood my dreams or the way my mind works, and each day i quietly wish to be free, to live on my own terms. but the truth is, i can’t fully escape. i am bound to them, not just by blood, but by everything that shaped me. my mother, she doesn’t hate me, but sometimes it feels like she doesn’t love me either. maybe she sees a reflection of the life she couldn’t have in me, and maybe that makes her ache. she says things like why does your father treat you like a princess, and i wonder why that bothers her. maybe she just wants to see me married off so she can stop witnessing the rebellion she never chose for herself. still, i am a part of her. even when i resist her beliefs and want nothing more than to run, i carry her in me.

that’s the labyrinth of DNA, the twisted maze of molecules we’re bound by. we are knotted together in ways we can never untangle. even if we inherit different dreams, we are stitched together by something deeper.

but what if escaping isn’t the answer? what if i could find a way to live within this labyrinth, carving my own path while still carrying the parts of me that belong to them? maybe it’s not about running away or severing the ties. it’s about learning to reshape them. i can’t erase what they’ve given me, and maybe i don’t need to. perhaps there’s a way to stand firm in my own choices without feeling like i’m betraying the life that shaped me. it’s not about erasing the past, but transforming it into something that fits the person i’m becoming. i don’t need to escape the labyrinth, because i can learn to move through it, step by step, without losing myself. in the end, i choose this labyrinth, its twists and turns, its light and its shadows, because it’s mine to navigate. maybe we’re not irreparably broken; maybe we don’t need to escape at all. we can choose this labyrinth, shape ourselves within it, and grow. as thomas edison said in his final words, ‘it’s very beautiful out there.’ i don’t know where ‘there’ is, but i know it exists somewhere. and i believe it’s as beautiful as i’ve imagined it, waiting for us to discover it.

and maybe that’s what it is, the labyrinth of love, of family, of self. we can’t escape it, but maybe, just maybe, we don’t need to. we can embrace its chaos, its twists, its turns, and find beauty in the journey. we shape ourselves in its labyrinthine paths, and in the end, that’s where we become who we were always meant to be.