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Just Go Outside
I miss the feeling of the breeze on my face, the sun on my skin.
The sun is shining through the trees. The leaves are blowing in the wind and casting an ever-changing shadow on the muddy grass below. I can see it through the window from the harshly-lit office. My cursor blinks angrily from the bright white screen in front of me. The fluorescent lights buzz overhead. I’m squashed between the pressure of what’s expected of me and my desperate desire to dance in the dappled sunlight.
I watch a brown leaf gently flutter to the ground. I wished to be that leaf, just let go to float on the breeze to whatever came next for me. I could escape this place and do anything, be anything. Except these leaves always end up as mulch under the feet of the commuters traipsing to and fro. A pile of broken dreams, wet from the rain. That would be me: full of hope then trampled beneath the heel of an expensive shoe.
Just go outside, I scream at myself, but I can’t.
The trees are bare and the ground is crisp. There are flies in my head, buzzing and crawling. Wriggling over all my thoughts and turning them into things that they are not. Flipping my loves from good to bad. There’s a window to the truth somewhere deep in my brain but I’ve forgotten the way back to it. I want everything to stop, even if that means that…
