Master of another person is he, who has the power to give him what he wants or to remove that which he does not want. So one who wishes to be free, should not want for, nor want to avoid, something that is under the control of another person. If he does want that which he cannot control himself, he shall be a slave.
Thus wrote Epiktetos around year one hundred-something before christ. I bought a small book he wrote - The Handbook of the Art of Life - when I graduated over a decade ago, before I met 'him', and I'd picked it up again when I decided to go for The Walk. I walked, and walked, and walked, and I read that little book of Greek philosophy and life advice over and over again until it was etched into my mind and I still read it. On the road I picked up the Rigveda, the Rigstula, anythign and everything I could find by Deepak Chopra and devoured it in the hopes that it would help me let go. I still walked, too. I reached the High Coast at the end of summer and the border to Finland around mid-winter, stopping here and there along the way to examine the marks of human history to take my mind off my vice. I didn't feel done walking even after I passed my initial goal, because my mind was still locked and I felt cramped, much too cramped to want to cramp myself in under a roof and stay somewhere. I felt claustrophobic in houses. Probably because I felt claustrophobic in my own mind. Heck, I slept under the stars whenever it wasn't raining and it helped, but I still always, always felt as if I was locked into a small space.
I took up meditating, joined spiritual retreats on the way, left the vices of mainstream society behind and just kept walking. I couldn't get a visa into Russia so when I reached the other end of Finland I just took the ferry from Helsinki to Tallin and then I kept following the coast of the Baltic Sea. I wanted to be free. It was like Epiktetos had written; I wanted something I wasn't in control of, and I was a slave to that. And I was tired of it. I was so very, very tired of it, and I needed to somehow let him go and be free of his influence. I'd realized somewhere along the way - between Torne Valley and Vaasa, I think - that I was brainwashed, spending a few days in a library to look into psychology and checking off way too many of the boxes. Isolation, manipulation, lies. I loved him and I hated him, and it hurt me that I couldn't let him go even after I knew that he had deliberately tried to control me like that. That he still did, even though I hadn't talked to or heard from him since I left our city. I thought of therapy but I was so deeply ashamed of what I had become that talking to someone about it was beyond what I could bear. That, I knew, was also partially his work. Which didn't help.
It was summer again by the time I passed the border from Germany to Denmark, still on foot. I'd been traveling for more than a year, in the hopes that my messed up mental knot would release itself. Yet, I still felt insane.
On the ferry from Denmark back to Sweden, I'd made up my mind. One who wishes to be free should not want for something that is under the control of another person.
The solution was simple. Not a solution I was comfortable with and certainly NOT what good old Epiktetos had meant by his words, but still, perhaps, an escape for me. And they do say that karma is a bitch. I hummed into the sea winds as the ferry carried me back towards my homeland, towards him, whittling away at a stick that I had carved into the rough shape of a person. As I tried to carve the jawline I cut the knife a little too deeply into the neck and the head snapped off.
Ha ha ha, whoops.