She finally dared to exhale. All the help up breath rushed out of her in a tidal wave of relief. The plane had finally taken off. She was air-borne. They could not get her now. She had left everything behind once and for all.

She looked around her, her fellow travelers were in various stages of settling in, some were reading, some were still tense waiting for the plane to steady after the take-off and some were just staring into space, trying to solve the intricate problems of their personal worlds.

She dared not think, dared not reflect. In the realm of her mind she had imposed a strict contraband on all emotional thinking. It had been so for the past few months, her emotions, ethics and responsibilities had been packed into airtight cartons, sealed, addressed and locked away to be delivered and sorted out only when she had the time for it. The baggage was staggering and she was not yet ready to carry it. Until now she had had no time. All the processors in her brain had been taken over by the threads of rational thought; threads of stainless steel operating on cool, impersonal, selfish reason. Her whole psyche had been operating in the survival mode. The decision had been made, the plan had been drawn up, the wheels had been set in motion.

Now in the plane, above the clouds she leaned against the headrest of her seat. The luggage which had been stowed away was threatening to spill over, bursting at the seams. No. not yet, she was not done and with a gargantuan effort she stuffed everything back inside and threw a deadbolt over it. She was empty now, floating among the clouds, going over the past few months as a general would ponder his strategies after a sting operation, evaluating his hits and his misses.

It all began with the test. It was positive. She was aghast. He was triumphant. The doctor was ridiculously happy for the both of them as if he had contrived the whole setup. They drove back in silence. He was already planning ahead. A bigger home, new furnishing, informing the family…The family, the toughest part. Not a word could she get in before every babe in both their extended families knew about ‘the good news’.  Congratulations kept pouring in, she was silenced by the celebrations around her, for her. He was too insanely happy to be able to discuss anything. She turned to her parents. Her mother simply put it down to a panic attack. It was natural, she said brushing it away with a flip of a hand, every woman feels unprepared. Her father was concerned but was not sure if it was the right thing to be. Only her brother understood. In that quiet, calm piercing way of his, he knew and he only said, “Get out of it when you can.”.

But could she? She had been dragged in and was getting in deeper every day, every second. She was drowning in a sea of flowers, gifts, congratulations, happy tears. She knew that she was trapped forever. Her life had been snatched away from her, her plans, her dreams had been cut away, aborted without a second thought and she could do nothing about it….

She tried to accept it, surrendered, feigned happiness hoping that her act would inspire the true emotion. During the day, she was the radiant mother to be, but in the dead of the night she was blank, numb, she desperately tried to dredge up some emotion in that blank, anger, grief, frustration, nothing….

The man who shared her bed, part of whose soul she had inside her, was now a stranger. Wrapped up in his joy, he could no longer see her. The shell which was her body was all he saw and all that mattered.

Then it all changed. The little being made its existence known one night; when the horizon had just begun to be tinged with red. He knocked, and the knock awoke her and everything which had been sleeping inside her. It all came over in a rush, anger, frustration, determination. She called her brother and he repeated, “Get out!”.

She did just that, not just for herself but for the one inside her. She had to escape to be able to love it, she had to choose to love it, not be forced into it. She was escaping every boundary that had imprisoned her, family, love, marriage, society. Boundaries which were closing in, threatening to clip her wings. She would fly free. Cold rational plotting and a few friends made things happen and here she was flying to freedom.

She was afraid of the baggage stowed away, she knew she had to sort it out. She had no illusions about the dirty laundry awaiting her. Every ethic, every principle, every scruple which had been instilled in her had been violated. Would she be able to live with the guilt of abandonment? She would, she had to, for her sake and for the sake of her child’s.

She would find herself again, alone. This had to be done alone. It was her second chance. The first she had frittered away in the servitude of convention. Not this one. She would live life, her own way. Those whom she had left behind were free to rejoin her but never again would she get lost in another’s woods.