Behind These Bars

Everyone seeks fullness, and when you find it that means you have everything you want. But what if you only want one thing, and once you achieve it you realize that there is nothing more. Does that count as fullness or emptiness?

I woke up this morning to the cold grey walls that surround me. My eyes quickly adapted to the hard steel bars of a prison cell, but something was different. Today something was going to change. A strange feeling suddenly emerged in me. One that I hadn’t encountered in a very long time. I guess you could call it liberty. After years of imprisonment, it’s an incredible feeling to know that today was my last day living this nightmare. I still remember the first time I set foot in this dark place like it was yesterday. I remember how overwhelming it was the first time I saw the bitter cold room that would be my home for the next 30 years. The people around me, their souls filled with sadism and apathy. I pitied them, but deep down I knew that I was one of them. This thought comforted me in a way that even to this day I do not understand.

I take  one last look around this blank desolate cell room.  I’ve said my final goodbyes to my dear friends I have made over the past few decades. ‘I’m really going to miss this place’, I thought to myself. It may not be the most pleasant way to live but it’s my home. I soon realized how foolish these thoughts were. Today was going to be the first day of my life! He screamed it out, for the world to hear.

‘Goodbye David.’ The guard said to me as I took my first step in the real world. For the first time in years, I  felt alive. Alive like the first time a newborn child opens its eyes. Alive like the first breath you take after holding it in for so long. It was astonishing really.

I soon snapped out of my phantasm and took in reality. The world wasn’t like I had remembered it 30 years ago. It had changed so much, it was overwhelming almost. For days I gazed at the world around me. The number of choices i had to make was far too many. The people i had once called my family had grew and evolved without me. It seemed like nothing had waited for me when he first left. I felt like I was part of a blank world of emptiness. Depression, a void fills my soul. I can’t get a job. One look at my record and bosses turn their backs on me with their pointy noses in the air. Whispers fill my ears when my back is turned. I think of my time in prison. ‘I was so genuinely happy when I came out, why am I so miserable now?’ No one is willing to understand me, to give me a chance. I don’t belong here, that’s the biting truth. Things were so much simpler behind bars. At least there I felt like something, someone. The whispers are getting louder, I can’t stay here. This isn’t where I belong. With that, I see a small robbery taking place at the corner of the street. Without putting any real thought into my actions, I pull out his thirty-eight, and whisper an honest sorry to the man who I decided was going to take me back home.

David wakes up. He is in his cot. Bars cover the exit as a guard he recognizes walks by on the outside. A small smile emerges on his chapped lips. Order and simplicity. This is where he belongs. He never knew he could feel so much joy behind bars.