I find myself sitting on a fence. Behind me is a house, it is not mine but I’ve lived there for so long that it almost feels like home.

Perhaps for the same reason, it has also become a place that I need to move away from.

It is comforting in the sense that it is familiar, I know the rhythms that move it along from one day to the next.

I am also however, tired of its churning chaos, the familiar creak of certain steps near the landing, the clutter in the cellar that no one has the energy to clean up or even face.

I can see the fence I’m sitting on clearly. It is pretty, it is white, it surrounds the house, makes it secure but it also ties me down, binds me in and wears me out. It bars me from certain realities, certain possibilities beyond the confines of the house, beyond the vision of its occupants.

I admit I am afraid to unlock the gate, afraid to step onto unfamiliar ground.

Yet I take a deep breath and place my hand on the latch. Although my hand hesitates in my mind I’ve already undone it, I’ve already crossed the confines of these grounds, strolled along newer pastures, seen a different sun. I did all of that the minute I thought of leaving the house. And yet I pause. I wonder whether what I will truly see will match up to what I expect, will match with what I hope. And I hope that I’m taking the right decision.

I look back at the house, its occupants, its churning, its humming and wonder what it will think of me. Will it think of me at all? I wish that I could know, that their thoughts would form bubbles in the vacant sky and reveal themselves.

I see them, heads bent in work, whispering harmless little secrets to each other in stray corners, chuckling, obeying, some working without believing, all of them still avoiding the clutter accumulating in the cellar. I face the fence again, I undo the latch and open the gate and hope that for some time, another fence, another boundary will not catch me…fence