It was never easy for me as a growing young woman to leave the house. Leaving the house required an explanation. It might sound a bit dramatic to say that walking the dog might’ve been liberating to me. If a leash was in my hands, I can take it and go on walks, have long phone calls, meet classmates, and the longer the walk the better it was for a dog. I remember once leaving a little late in the evening, the sun has already set and it seemed like a cloudy yet calm night. All of a sudden it starts raining, raining hard on me and Maxi. It felt so good to be out under the rain. I was young and I wish I rushed to my room to a pen and paper and wrote more to myself about these stolen moments of freedom.
It is still not easy for me to leave the house as a woman. Twenty eight years old now. The world is not making it easy for me to love what I do. I think I am not making it easy for myself either. My choices have been filtered by the eyes of my parents. It’s like all this time I was wearing glasses and the lenses through which I saw the world and made choices were theirs. I am paying the price for that now. Unemployed at 28, lost, insecure indeed, scared, and more alone than ever. One of the most exciting things in my life remains a secret. Just like those stolen moments of freedom, a late walk under the rain justified by the dog, a closed door behind which a 5 year old stole moments to dance and perform, a not so white a lie about a work trip to a city by the Mediterranean were I’d still a kiss or more from a lover. I breathed freedom again in Beirut on August 2019 and I cannot forget how I felt. In my halter neck flower printed dress and Stan Smith shoes, a hair dampened by the sweat and humidity of the city, I walked the street alongside free souls and ones asking for freedom. How do we deliberately miss on these chances living behind closed doors and still through the lenses of our parents?
I still get the same nervous feeling whenever I am about to leave the house. I ‘ve been dying to leave it. I think I cry coming back to it. I hate what this house resembles for me. I cannot feel expanded in it. Nobody gets it. My pursuit for freedom, and a life of truth and integrity. I cannot seem to reconcile the different parts of me and the ones that made me me. I wonder if this yearning I have in me, one that feels so outside of my control, comes from my mother’s womb. I wonder if she yearned for freedom so much and never attained it, I inherited the feeling to liberate her from this responsibility. Freedom is a responsibility afterall and no way is it light to carry. Only its feeling in the body is light, it expands you so much, you float so lightly… feet floating as they stride down the street, body floating on water, arms so light they move with each step. I wonder if this is an inherited yearning.
Where would this yearning go if I do not fulfill it? It doesn’t look like it will die with me. It runs in my blood. If I am to carry a child, they shall drink from it. If my body doesn’t carry one, it will leave me on my last breath and find a body to inhabit. Such yearnings don’t just disappear, they don’t dissipate into nothingness, they are stubborn and they’re here to stay. Everything I long for, I cannot all fulfill. But if this page needs to know one thing, it is that I do not want to carry this yearning of mine to the grave. I want to live the life I yearn for, as poorly defined as it is, I want it. I want it bad. I am desperately asking for the signs, the guidance, the clarity to fucking DO IT, RUN towards it with open arms. I want to meet it the way we meet a lover. I want to meet it and I cannot stretch my arms long enough. I want a life I love and I don’t want to only get it through a man. I want to get it, sweat and tears, by myself! This is for me, this is about me. I really cannot remain here, I will die in my place and all that is inside me will die with me. If I am to die, I want to die alone and without this yearning.
I want to only take peace with me.
