"What Will Happen to All of That Beauty?" by Ayana Mathis

For many years I was a lion. I answered to no one, really. And I was free. There were periods in which my freedom was a terror, as though I were untethered and floating off into the high thin air. And there were times my freedom made me ferocious and strong. I have lived, for the most part, as I wanted to and I have had the liberty to attempt, always failing, to become a person I admired. I am not sure what this has cost me. I am not sure now of what I mean by freedom. I do know that I have doggedly refused to belong—to a community, to a family, to a religion. It seems to me now that this is naïve and foolhardy, the idea that I could somehow outwit the nature of being alive.

- Ayana Mathis’s incredible meditation on faith at Guernica