Sights and smells

There are things that take me back so quickly to my childhood like bright blue skies, fresh cut grass and anything that smells of violets. My best sights and smells are outdoor ones because outdoors and away was the only place to be free.

For me it was a long wait to get away from my family. I knew I was stuck there until I was 18 but those were 18 very long years.

Summer was best because I could walk away until sunset and breathe the air of the promised land- that future that they would not be a part of and yet.. and yet.. we cannot really escape from these people as long as we hold them inside.

Obligation has kept me embroiled in their lives and their mundane trivialities until every emotion and every breath is stifled and so for years, until recently I have never really escaped. Only in body but always to return from time to time and emotionally never to venture outside the walls I built to keep them at bay.

Now that I am separating the worlds of them and me, the me becomes an us in itself and there are more to deal with. Those unacknowledged voices tearing their way out because the walls are coming down and so we ask ourselves -

Which is the prison? Where are the walls? Is it safer to stay inside where we know the rules or venture out truly looking for a world to call our own.