Unencumbered

I don't know why the word suddenly popped into my mind: unencumbered.

I was thinking of a word that could capture what I wished to feel. But I guess it feels right. Some days I wish I could go to therapy any time I wanted to. To remember daily to let go of the things that are not on me to decide, and that I have the power to change the things that are. I forget too often.

To feel unencumbered from human hurt, narcissism, money, lust, lies and jealousy. So many years and yet it feels like nothing has changed.

I want to be a better person that my parents were, to build a healthier and more loving and less toxic relationship than they did, to love my children wholeheartedly more than they ever did and not hurt them. The desire is so much that I fear I can't achieve it. 

And yet the idea of marriage scares me. I'd always wanted to (to prove the parents wrong?) and I thought B was the one, and then he was not. I don't know if I will ever want it again, or if I'm incapacitated because of what happened and the parents' continued feud. 

Friends and acquaintances around me keep talking about marriage. Some are pressuring their other halves into it, some tiptoeing towards it cautiously but optimistically. Others are backing away from a commitment they're not ready to make, and a few have divorced after being together barely some years.

All this fucking societal pressure.