Freedom

“I’m 28,” he said, as if he had reached a ripe old age. An age when everything was done, and nothing left to do. She wanted to laugh. I’m 43 she wanted to say, she wanted to show him the video of the 102-year-old woman sprinting away to gold. She stopped herself. He didn’t have to say the words for her to understand that he was heartbroken, someone had betrayed him so completely that life itself seemed meaningless.

His forlorn eyes, the straggly beard had warned her that everything was not right, but he seemed to be chugging along, showing off to all of them the latest app he had created. Yet he fell ill frequently, his body reflecting the state of his mind. Every doctor he visited gave him a new pill to subdue the various diseases they saw in his body, no one ever stopped the poison engulfing his mind.

She had been there, she tried to tell him, those dark places of the mind where no light ever seemed to enter. Keep moving, she told him. Go to the gym, list out all the things you’ve ever wanted to do. Find something you can immerse yourself in. Don’t try to forget her, you will remember her even more. She found herself talking about the time when jumping down seven stories seemed like the logical thing to do. “Look at me, I’m ok now,” she told him. His voice sounded a little lighter as he thanked her for calling him or so she hoped.

Am I really ok, she wondered as she looked at herself in the mirror? She barely recognised the tired, plump middle-aged woman staring back at her. Her mind was like a teenager, leaping and jumping at every new possibility and then slowly sinking into despair. She went through all her old diaries, reading all the thoughts that had been her companions all these years. She had been trapped in the cocoon of her mind, but she had developed wings now. All she needed was the strength to break her shackles and fly.

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