indebted

Julia, the little snapping turtle, felt indebted to the bigger one for saving her from chaos. Like a tiny boat tethered to an oversized anchor, she found herself bound by gratitude and guilt. Even though these aquatic turtles typically preferred slow-moving, shallow bodies of water with muddy bottoms for places to hide, Julia was scared, so when Julio saved her, she felt a multitude of emotions – two parts gratitude, one part obligation, shaken, not stirred, all for a life of good enough.
Things were made worse for Julia when her savior's mother, sharp-tongued and protective, blamed her for trapping her son by having his child, his baby. It was as if Julia had committed the cardinal sin of turtle-dom – falling in love and reproducing, something so ordinary and obvious.
Julia rested solidly on a big enough rock in the middle of the slow-moving stream, her very own turtle throne in the watery kingdom. She had a good enough view realizing that Julio had saved her from a life of utter insecurity – like upgrading from a leaky rowboat to a modest yacht. She now held a young one for whom she too wanted to provide a sacred form of safety and a life beyond just good enough – a turtle version of the American Dream, if you will.
As she bathed in the sun on that rock, soaking up rays like a solar panel with a shell, she relaxed enough to feel her helplessness.
Helpless to the nature of water, weather, and wind and all other things over which she had absolutely no control – including Julios’ mother. Helpless to her smallness, social stature, and lack of significance too. It all amounted to extreme insecurity and a fight to protect her life and yet, it was not enough, just good enough.
Feeling helpless was okay now. It was real and true, but indebted?
Therein lay the real obstacle to her happiness, like a stubborn piece of lettuce stuck between her beaks. It lived in her tiny throat and kept her from speaking tiny gems of truth that could have created intimacy and fun, but instead lay like hundreds of diamonds in the rough forming a mine field of potential explosions. She gulped. Not once, or twice, but hundreds of times, swallowing her fear of rupturing her security, all the while becoming more and more insecure and frozen – a turtle-shaped ice cube in the flow of life.
Her contemplations allowed her to question her deep and archaic sense of being indebted to Julio for saving her from a life of not good enough which had come with the awful feeling of impending doom, poverty, and chaos. And her reflections allowed her to question believing his mother's false accusations too. Julia had lived with these feelings for decades, realizing that her blind loyalty to Julio came with enormous restrictions on her inner freedom and her ability to move fluidly through the waters of life.
As she made peace with helplessness, her whole turtle body relaxed into a natural state of esteem. She didn't feel sticky anymore, to Julio or his mother – no longer a turtle-shaped piece of emotional flypaper. She was ready now for the unfamiliar even though she did not know what that meant! She had no plan to leave Julio or his family, only to live without the binds of obligation. This was truly unfamiliar, so she announced her readiness to the stream and the sun who both reflected her enthusiasm with an eternal brightness that warmed her tiny, perfect heart – a cosmic round of applause for one small turtle's big revelation.