Breathe

Perhaps it was the four monotone walls closing in slowly again. Or maybe the grouchy face that glared back at me in the mirror across the room. Alarm went off at six, like it always did. Gray skies. Dirty backpack. The same shirts had been lying on the edge of my bed for weeks now, but they were just like the ones in the closet, so it made no difference. My hair was scruffy and scraggly, but there was never a reason to comb it. Muddy shoes. Old jacket. I lugged my backpack out the door.

The neighbors were still fast asleep; a quiet street with silent houses. Trampling over the flower beds. Chalk on the pavement. Opening the car door. Shoving my backpack inside. Starting the car. Tall buildings loomed in the horizon and the sun was starting to rise. 

When I got to school, I did not need to think twice—it was muscle memory. Close the car door. Step outside. My feet took me to my first period class, though without much purpose. Students were roaming about in the halls, conversing by their lockers, heading to various buildings. Each individual blended easily into the rest of the student body, faded uniforms blurring together. 

The room was cold, the air conditioning buzzing above our heads softly. Fingers tapping against the wooden desk. Pens clicking. Again and again. 

I couldn’t stand that noise. 

A three-ring binder lay on my desk; it was an ugly dark blue color, and contained messy sheets of half-torn out paper. Doodles on post-it notes sat in the pockets of my binder. Graph paper. All work had to be done on graph paper. My yellow highlighter hurt my eyes and my pen was bleeding red. 

Please stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

I didn’t know whose voice it was—that same flat, boring voice on the announcements. It was played over and over each day. A sort of emotionless voice, devoid of significant presence or meaning. I didn’t know why, but we stood there like puppets. Hand over our hearts. Out of our seats. And I was light-headed all of a sudden, but it was nothing new. 

Textbooks under our desks. I hated bending down to reach them, and they were far too heavy. Hard, orange cover graffitied by previous students. The corners of some pages were ripped, and kids had written down the answers to the questions next to them anyway. I didn’t think that was allowed. 

Shrieking bell. Second period. Across the hall and down the stairs. 

A familiar face greeted me outside the door. I’d seen this one before. 

Black rug. Dusty walls. My backpack was heavy and it hurt to put it back down. The black writing on the whiteboard announced a test coming up next week, but we had just taken a test. There were more tests, I figured, next week and the week after. 

The smart board hurt my eyes and the fire hydrant was bleeding red. My desk mate sat down beside me, dropping a load of items on his side of the table. Five scraps of paper, and a green pen, and a notebook, and his pen. Then he stood up again to greet his friend across the room, but I was certain no friend of mine could break me from my trance, I thought. 

I dragged my feet across the square tiles. They hadn’t been cleaned for months, and I was wearing the same shoes again. The laces were ripped. The chair was a dark hue of navy blue, like midnight. I missed midnight. 

Couldn’t something change?

I longed for just the briefest liberation from this mundane routine. I longed for a break from waking up at the same time each morning and wasting the same seven hours of my day in a locked building. My fingers were tired of gripping pencils and pens so tightly, scrawling illegible notes etched into lined paper. My eyes were tired of reading, my brain was tired of comprehending. My feet were tired of walking the same paths every day. 

I longed for adventure. Adrenaline. 

I longed for a day without my teachers’ voices, a day without studying. A day without waking up at seven o’clock sharp. A day without four monotonous walls. 

Outside the window, a squirrel flew from branch to branch, rustling the leaves as it sprang. It never stopped. It never slowed down. And a bird tapped impatiently at the glass window, a graceful smudge of colors in a monotone world. How I wished for that kind of freedom, the freedom to run to the edge of the world, until the end of time. To smile with radiance and truly mean it. To live as I pleased. 

That would be lovely, I thought. 

I learned about science that day, but I did not listen one bit. Visualizing my grade for the upcoming test, I figured I would regret not paying attention. But time did not allow for regret—no, mornings kept coming and nights kept ending. Grades never changed and tests never stopped.

The bell screamed several times a day. And like a pawn controlled by some higher power or authority, like a robot whose only responsibility was to act upon codes built in against its will, I found myself in third period. It was going too fast, really. There was no time to pause and think. One after another, and I couldn’t breathe. 

Her room was decorated with much complexity and intricacy; there were stickers and posters on all four monotonous walls, and it was like trying to have a private conversation with each person in a large crowd at once. Faces and movies. Posters. Books and quotes. Art. I missed the emptiness of a blank room, but I knew I would wish I was back with these abstract decorations once they were gone again. 

The windows were closed—why were they closed?

Eyes dancing over texts, fleeting over paragraphs printed on a blaringly loud paper. I couldn’t breathe; I couldn’t concentrate. Read quietly, she’d said, but how could I? There were too many thoughts, too many voices: hushed voices, bickering voices, angry voices. The words blurred again, and I winded up on another page. 

Bookshelf in the corner. There was always a bookshelf in the corner, and I did have a favorite novel there, but it was always on the second to last shelf, on the very far left.

Repetition was driving me insane. 

And by the time lunch came around, my head was about to burst and my eyes were straining to focus. I couldn’t remember the last time I ate something other than a peanut butter and jelly sandwich for lunch.

The cafeteria was crowded and miserable, wet footprints adorning the slippery floors. Many of the seats were broken, and Lord knew what was on the table. I suppose the custodians hadn’t been able to clean it. Voices. So many voices. And all of them sounded fuzzy; I couldn’t hear a single thing, yet everything was happening at once. Kids here sat in cliques, but there wasn’t even a table for outcasts like myself; nobody wanted to be friends with someone who jumped from group to group, from place to place, from friend to friend. Because their hearts belonged with these kinds of friendships; this was home to them. 

But me?

I was just somebody passing by. 

A traveler. A nomad.

I sat down by the window, and nobody sat next to me, but that was alright. Solitude was necessary to maintain one’s composure, at least to some degree. I chewed numbly through my peanut butter and jelly, heart completely preoccupied by the desire for a break from routine, eyes entirely focused on the world outside. 

Oh, how alive it looked. How alluring.

Leaving campus was against the rules, but if rules were designed to stick people into place, I wasn’t having any of it, at least not today. Surely, I could have just one day to break the rules. 

Temptation was flooding in, wave after wave, but I wasn’t about to resist anyway. I stuffed my sandwich back into its ziplock bag, shoved it back into my lunch box, and slipped out the door. There was no security guard. 

And then I was free, and then I was running. Despite the burdens of my hefty backpack, I was running and running like a prisoner released from incarceration, like a veteran returning home, like a hunter chasing quarry, like a bird escaping a cage. I was a bit delirious, perhaps. Or maybe even driven halfway to insanity. 

I only stopped when the sickening sight of the school building was no longer visible, when I could no longer picture the straining yellow highlighter and crimson red pen. All that was before me was freedom. The old, familiar, comforting monotony was taken over by a soft light falling over the pines like a veil, pouring into the branches like honey. Sun dominated the skies again, ruling with an iron fist across her kingdom. Meager twigs cracked underneath my feet, and the pines towered over my head like cathedrals. 

I didn’t know where I was going, but I could see in color again. The world was no longer blurry, and my eyes didn’t strain to see. No blinding smart boards and no painted fire hydrants. I could live again. I could breathe again. 

For hours, I trailed along the edge of the woods, my vision flooded with emerald green. Chipped pine cones rolled about lazily on the dirt. I recalled this morning. Drowsy, dull morning. The four monotonous walls in my bedroom, but there were no walls here. I ran my fingers along uneven tree trunks; and they weren’t like the polished wooden desks at school one bit. And I was washed out by a breeze, a delicate autumnal kiss. Birds in varying colors perched themselves on flimsy branches. Singing. Watching. 

For hours, I remained, until the skies turned gold, filtering the gentlest light through the pines; and they appeared as though they were set aflame. The birds were starting to bid one another good night, and the air was growing colder, crisper, sharper. Sun gave up her position as the sole ruler across clear skies, and she began to submerge herself into the horizon. The first stars began to awaken, and soon enough, the faintest outline of a crescent moon was dawning. 

Only then did I begin to head back home. 

Our ivory-colored door and pink carnations were inviting, as were the Welcome mat and spotless green lawn; however, it did not feel like home. As I kicked off my shoes—the ones with the ripped laces, I realized that I hadn’t truly known what home felt like. Home wasn’t always a place with a brilliantly sculpted front door; white bed sheets and curtains didn’t do the trick either. And potted plants and clean windows were merely a façade. No—home was a place where you could breathe. 

But I hadn’t known that for the longest time. Until today, I hadn’t truly been home. I had only been a traveler. A nomad. 

And I knew I had walked out of campus earlier that day at school and missed half of my classes, but I couldn't bring myself to stress over it. Tomorrow, I would regret it. Tomorrow, I would worry again. Tomorrow, I would wake up at seven o’clock sharp again. 

But today was all that mattered. 

Today, I could breathe again.