1. You have a rope. It depends what you do with it.

 
2. My plan is to climb this rope ladder. To clutch each rung as a song I’ve sung, in the tides of my life in this high-strung planet.

 
3. The question is, what am I climbing for? Quintessentially, what is this quest in which I must quell a fear? 

 
4. Below me is what I will bereave. A lake of little minnows, and a sea of striving sharks is what I leave. I clutch this rung of rope with all I’ve ever known; do not let me fall into this acidic unknown. For sure we do not feel, we are simply skin and bone. 

 
5. But it is true; we have learned we amount to nothing if not skin and bone. And if we are not pretty enough, not perfect or productive, or praising enough, we must pretend. We must pretend to be perfect and productive and praising. And if not that, then shame on you. And shame on you for being smart. 

 
6. This is what I want to leave behind. For though I’ve hoisted myself onto this hobbling heft, my hero, others still swim with the sharks. They are the minnows. I am too a minnow. It is not something I want to be. 

 
7. When I climb, I climb away from the ground. But as I climb, I find I cannot help but move upwards. I must leave a location in order to enter a new one. Leave behind a feeling, though each rung is an equal blemish of pain in a teardrop’s worth of rain. 

 
8. Up above me is the sky. An endless expanse of everything. Everything else.

 
9. I see rainbows. I see clouds. I see storms and birds and wind and sunshine. There is room to fly. To fly away. And to fly to something new. I see everything I never knew to ever know to love. 

 
10. You've climbed your rope ladder. Now we must let it go...