Freedom is Bought With
by Diana Odasso
I was twenty-three years old when I broke up with a long term boyfriend in Cairns, Australia. Six years together, I felt dead, suffocated, spit up and rehashed. On the great Australian expanse, I was walking in a cage. I thought it was him.
After the cataclysmic breakup, I travelled south, alone and against the advice of my family. Previously vegan, I started smoking cigarettes and living off ice cream and beer. I lost weight. I tanned brown. Somewhere along the Gold Coast, I hitched a ride out of some crappy backpacker town. It was a long road to wherever we were going next, maybe a day’s drive. The driver’s name was Pip. He had red hair and was kind. I cannot remember the others but the station wagon was full. Pip drove through a straggled eucalyptus landscape, a pale orange earth, snakes sunning on the strip. Sometime after dark, we pulled into a rest stop. It was dangerous to drive through the bush at night, animals on the road, kangaroos smashing fenders, cars in ditches, no ambulances for miles and miles. Pip fixed up a hammock above the picnic bench. Underneath, I rolled out my sleeping bag, a feeling of giddiness in my heart.
No one knew where I was. Not my family, not my friends. I was thousands of miles from the last memory of me and for the first time in my entire life, all the expectations, all the stories and lies disappeared. I was relieved of myself. Under the southern hemisphere sky ablaze with stars, a feeling of total freedom crystallized and with it, concurrent, at the exact same moment, I suffered the loneliest feeling of my life.
The following morning Pip took me aside and asked, “Are you okay?”
“Why?”
“You have barely spoken since we left town. But last night, you were so happy sleeping on the bench. You even smiled.”
“I just broke up with my boyfriend of six years,” I told the half truth and he seemed satisfied. Truth was, it was not the boyfriend that was breaking my heart. It was life with its gaping mouth and awful truths: freedom is bought with self. The freedom we crave is the freedom of little deaths. We pay with pieces of ourselves – the triumphs and failures, the dreams and delusions, even our loved ones, even our names. And without me, what else is there? Freedom is a feeling best left for the gods.
whoo. heavy. so brave (and crazy) to go off on your own to work through your feelings and lose yourself.. and find yourself..
This is stunning. I love this line: “I was thousands of miles from the last memory of me…”
Re-read this again last night as I was writing up the winners’ post for http://www.yeahwrite.me – congrats on taking crowd favorite! It’s such a moving piece, and has inspired me to dig deeper into your archives.
This was exquisitely written. I felt alongside you on the journey.
I had a similar experience. After a breakup, I went to France (before cell phone ubiquity and whatnot) and what a feeling, knowing that no one in the world knew where I was. To me, nothing was better than feeling that adventure. I got myself back on that trip.
Congratulations on winning at yeah write! I loved this piece so much.
This is a beautiful piece. The final paragraph spoke to me so deeply that I read it four times. “Freedom is bought with self. The freedom we crave is the freedom of little deaths. We pay with pieces of ourselves . . .” Wow! So much truth there.
this is just gorgeously told and written. and good for you for discovering this and being able to find yourself at such a young age.
I re-read this story this morning and picked up on details I missed the first time. I think I could read it ten times more and still not be bored.
And congratulations on your selection as the Yeah Write #153 Crowd Favorite!
Exquisite( did someone already pick that adjective?) and well written. I should re-read.
[…] “Freedom is Bought With” by Diana Odasso at A Southward Tide […]
Beautiful essay–I love that it all came down to this: “the loneliest feeling in my life.”
Congrats on winning crowd favorite on the yeah write challenge grid this week! Well deserved, indeed. http://yeahwrite.me/winners-153/
Very relatable to me on many levels. I escaped to Costa Rica, Mexico, Cuba in an extremely low-budget and solo whirlwind. It was a great salve that helped me decide which ME I wanted to let thrive. Thank you for sharing.
Congratulations on your well-deserved crowd favorite win over at yeah write! We hope to see more of you over there. http://yeahwrite.me/winners-153/
I loved this piece. This post was added to the weekly writing challenge at yeahwrite.me and I’m so glad it was chosen as this week’s crowd favorite! I hope you’ll check out our challenge and consider submitting posts in the future.
This was beautiful. I have been struggling to learn how to tell a complex, irrational, emotional story in the proper form for Yeah Write, and this is such a perfect example. Congratulations on your win!
I liked being in the moment with the narrator, especially in the paragraph where we meet Pip. Hope you celebrate your winning prose tonight.
Thank you for all the kind words. I am humbled and grateful that so many of you could relate. What seemed like my loneliest moment is just a part of a journey we all experience in one way or another.
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