Escaping

Do you know what it’s like to long for escape? To feel trapped in a world that’s much too small, too suffocating? My childhood… it was a prison. I’ve spent years trying to outrun it. I was raised on the estate, in a home where love was scarce but expectations were plenty. Every day, I lived under the shadow of what a “lady” ought to be. Silent, obedient, meek. 

But that wasn’t me.

Even as a little girl, I would dream of the sky. The wide, boundless sky. I’d watch the birds dip and dive, and I knew—I knew—that freedom lay somewhere up there. Not in the drawing rooms and parlors where they tried to contain me, but in the wind and clouds where no one could tell me who to be. The weight of their demands… It’s funny, really, how it felt heavier than this parachute on my back.

I wanted out. I wanted more. But not in the way they expected, not in the way of parties or society balls. No. I wanted the wind in my face, the thrill of the unknown. I wanted to defy gravity, to break the rules they had written for me. 

When I first jumped out of that airplane… everything changed. The ground, so far below, looked insignificant. It was a moment suspended between fear and exhilaration. The rush of the wind as I fell, the brief panic, and then… the pull. The parachute opened, and in that silence that followed, I felt something I’d never known before.

Freedom. Pure, unadulterated freedom.

You see, the sky doesn’t care who you are or where you come from. It doesn’t care about your past. It’s just there, waiting for those who are bold enough to claim it.

And in that moment, with the earth falling away beneath me, I realized I wasn’t just escaping my childhood. I was soaring beyond it. Beyond their expectations, beyond their limitations. Up there, I became me – not the girl from the boarding schools, but the woman who would make her own way. The one who would fly, jump, and push the boundaries they tried so hard to set.

Because in the end, it was never about running away. It was about rising above.