Why You Finally Got Free — And Still Couldn't Move

Barefoot

A house with fifty other students. The beach right there. The freedom to stay up all night talking. No curfew. No surveillance. No mother bursting through doors.

For the first time in years, something in me uncoiled. I could breathe.

But something else arrived to fill the space.

At Victory Gap Years the meals were included. And I had pocket money — actual pocket money, mine to spend on whatever I decided.

The first thing I bought was Ensure. The powder. My mother had drunk it when she was sick and I had never been able to get it for myself. I bought it and mixed it and drank it and then bought more. I also bought hummus. Ham. The things that had felt like luxury at the twins' house. Nobody was rationing anything. Nobody was watching.

I gained ten kilograms that year. I didn't see it happening. I just kept buying things I'd wanted for a long time.

There is a photo of me from that year. I am behind a counter at the church, selling cake. There is another girl next to me, shorter. I am wearing a red scarf. In the photo my hair looks orange and my face looks fat and I look enormous standing next to her.

I hate that photo.

I was wearing the bell-bottoms my mother had made for me before I left. She had taken me to the Plaza — bolts of fabric stacked floor to ceiling — and I stood there trying to find something I wanted. I couldn't find it. I didn't know what I wanted. I chose a blue denim-type material with a lighter blue pattern because it was there and it could become trousers and trousers were what I needed. The tailor made them into bell-bottoms. I wore them with gratitude for having pants that fit.

The red hoop earrings I put on because they were there. They were heavy on my ears all day. Mismatched scarves. Whatever was in the pile.

I walked barefoot to the mall because everyone else was walking barefoot to the mall. To the beach. Everywhere. The tar was hot and then the tiles inside were cold. I was six foot five, in bell-bottoms and heavy earrings, and people looked at me as I walked through town.

I wanted to hide my body. I also wanted to be seen.

I smiled back. I kept moving.

The Ocean

The ocean was right there. Endless. Right outside the window.

I went in once.

The rip current took me before I understood what was happening. One moment the water was a playground and then it was a heavy pulling hand. I didn't know how far from shore I was. My heart slammed against my ribs. Every dark shape in the water was a shark. I was certain of it.

I got out.

Afterward I couldn't tell how serious it had actually been. Something would happen and my body would go into full alarm and then afterward I would look around at everyone else who seemed completely fine and start to wonder if I had made it up. If I had overreacted. If the current was actually that strong or if I was just not strong enough. If the sharks were real or if I was being dramatic.

I'd been told my whole life that I overreacted.

So even when something was actually happening, I couldn't read it clearly. The alarm went off at the same volume whether the danger was real or not. I couldn't tell the difference anymore.

I just knew I didn't go back in.

After that, when the others grabbed their boards and headed for the water, I found reasons to stay on the sand.

My height made it awkward — finding the right center balance on a board when the swell was like that was genuinely difficult for someone my size. And I was a little sore that day. And the timing wasn't right. And it made more sense to watch and understand the mechanics before going back in.

/* FREEDOM_LOG */

.container {
    surveillance: NONE;
    curfew: NONE;
    access: UNRESTRICTED;
}

.body {
    signal: DANGER;
    source: UNVERIFIED;
    cross-reference: EXTERNAL_CALM;
    conclusion: OVERRIDE_SIGNAL;
}

.ocean {
    entry: ONCE;
    status: ABANDONED;
    reason: "I told myself I was being sensible";
    /* alarm volume: CONSTANT */
    /* calibration: LOST */
}

/* freedom installed */
/* code still running */

I sat on the sand and dug my toes into the grit until it went cold underneath.

I watched the surfers from the shore every single day of that year.

I told myself I was being sensible.

Jeffreys Bay should have been perfect.

What this excerpt documents is not a gap year story. It is what happens when the container changes and the code doesn't.

The surveillance was gone. The curfew was gone. The ocean was right there. Every external condition that had been named as the problem had been removed — and the body still couldn't receive it. It bought the things it had always wanted and didn't know what it wanted. It went into the water once and found a reason never to go back. It watched from the shore every single day and called that sensible.

The code doesn't need the original environment to keep running. It runs on the nervous system it was installed into. Which means freedom of circumstance is not the same as freedom of structure.

If you have had your own version of Jeffreys Bay — the thing you finally got, the space you finally reached, the life that should have felt like arrival — and something in you still couldn't move, the code was already running before you got there.

That code has a name. The X-Ray returns yours.