Holding me back.

A few days back, I came to my old city -- the city where I grew up, learnt all that I learnt, saw all that I saw; the city where I had stared at sunsets, tried to capture the clouds and danced with the rains.
It was the city of my dreams once.

I came back and felt like I didn't belong, came back to feel a certain uneasiness.
This was a place I had started finding hard to live in, and had almost felt liberated to leave.

I could not answer all the questions posed to me here, and yet wanted to connect as if I'd never left. But I felt cramped to be there. The roads I'd travelled a thousand times suddenly seemed so small, like little village tracts.

It was strange, and I actually physically felt the buildings cramping down and encroaching upon my path.

The crowd of people was again new to me.

But maybe it was not the roads and the city and the people. In fact, I'm sure it was not. It was me realising that I was still trapped within the confines of my own mind and fears.

I was still struggling to get away from what was holding me down.
I had got angry in that place, I had shouted and screamed. I had howled and cried.
I had sat in a dark room all by myself.
I had wanted to break anything that came my way.
And I had wanted, to for once, be seen as the victim not the perpetrator. I had wanted to see SOME empathy, SOME concern... that I didn't really believe was there. But I had wanted it anyway.

I wanted to go off like a bomb. I so wanted not to be there.

Maybe that was my way of trying to break free of those chains, my way of fighting for myself and what I wanted, of feeling that I could have things my way.

And I realised, I'd never left. I was still in that city, or at least the city was still in me, wherever I went.... and in me were still all its fears, the bondage, the sadness and anger, the disbelief and distrust, the disillusionment with life...