Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.
The question opened up a can of worms in her stomach.
“Name an attraction or town close to home that you still haven’t got around to visiting.” .. the questionnaire asked.
Where is home? Which home? Home in another country where most of her family lived and she doesn’t?
Home, half way across the world, where she found a community of likeminded individuals and the freedom of movement?
Home, where she lives now but where she finds herself isolated in more ways than one?
Home, like happiness and love, was a fleeting flutter of wings that swept her off her feet when she least expected it.
A place one felt safe, content and could relax with ease. At least, until the next wave came crashing through the windows and flooding her ears. Making it difficult to breathe within the walls that suddenly felt 10ft high.
Home, was warm until it felt hot. Home was cosy until the atmosphere felt icy. Any attraction she wanted to visit or town close to what ‘home’ was at that point in time, was a place she didn’t feel the ceiling was crashing down on her shoulders.
A place where people weren’t desperate to taste the answers of which would roll off her tongue, of where she came from and what her status was. Why she was homeschooling her kids instead of putting them in school. Why she didn’t do more for herself. Then spat her and her words, as if she were a bitterness they couldn’t quite swallow. As if she had answered incorrectly and polluted the conversation. As if, she wasn’t quite what they were hoping for.
She yearned to visit a place she could wander amongst nature without being reprimanded for walking on the grass. A place she could walk barefoot and feel the earth beneath her toes and wouldn’t be stared at like she had lost her mind.
She longed to visit a coffee shop where she could go, with her little ones and they weren’t a nuisance. One with a cute play corner, with books and toys to keep them entertained without a screen. Where she could write and read in peace.
She dreamed of visiting a garden in the sky, that didn’t cost an arm and two legs. To explore nature from a different vantage point without a time limit. To watch the sky slip into different colours at the end of the day, birdsong filling the air, without fear of what that night might bring.
Night time meant sleep-time and sleep-time meant nightmares, nightmares she felt even more imprisoned by than people, her surroundings & the sky.
——
image used for cover is from Pinterest.
chasingsakina 