Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 68

This week's pictures is a creation by artist RoadioArts a digital artist from the Philippines. He calls this one: Cadena de Amor. He has some interesting art, many depicting people in anguish. You can check out more of his stuff on his Deviant Art page.

This image encompasses different elements, which together represent the journey of my life over the last 16 years, so I couldn't write it as a fiction tale, only as prose.

The General Guidelines can be found here.

How to create a clickable link in Blogger comments can be found on lasts week's post here.

There is also a Facebook group for Mid-Week Flash, if you fancy getting the prompt there.   

Release

I felt stuck.

There was no life here.

Not for me.

Everything was obligation, expectation, and desperation.

I felt tied.

I couldn’t set myself free.

People talked about finding the key, but I couldn’t even find the door.

The more I struggled to find a way out, the heavier the chains felt.

I was weighted down.

I could no longer lift my head, let alone my body.

I withdrew.

From the people surrounding me and from the people I’d drawn to me.

They held no solutions.

They told me not to focus on it.

They told me not to think about it.

They told me it was all in my head and I was looking at it the wrong way.

I moved my head round so much to see it from different perspectives, my neck hurt.

In fact it almost broke.

I went away to try and ‘get some perspective’.

All I found was emptiness and the obligation to return.

There was nothing else.

The grass wasn’t greener.

I had to water my own.

But there were no seeds.

Then one day someone mentioned a place.

Not a real place, an illusion of a place, somewhere in the ether.

In fact in the Ethernet.

It was a void that sometimes spoke back.

You followed people and people followed you.

You could find people, the right people, people that understood.

You could talk and be heard.

And talk when you didn’t want to be heard.

Yet not a word was spoken only written.

It opened a whole new world of possibilities.

A place to dream.

A place to create.

A place to forget about the obligations and the desperation.

A place that made the chains feel temporary and freedom possible.

A place of hope.  

A place carried on the wings of a bird.