THE FUSE

I wonder if you look upon me and feel proud.

Proud that I achieved what no woman in the family ever could.

That I fought for my freedom. For the right to choose. To draft my life whichever way I want, without the danger of the whip or the lash hanging over my back.

And I imagine the answer coming quietly, not loudly, not triumphantly:

Yes. I see you.

I see the courage it took to step out of a life where obedience meant safety and silence meant survival.

I see that you walked away not knowing whether the ground ahead would hold you – and you walked anyway.

But then I ask the question I’m almost afraid to say out loud.

Is this really what freedom is supposed to feel like?

This weight. This loneliness. This endless choosing.

Would I have been happier with fewer options?If the path had been narrower, clearer, already decided? Would restriction have made walking easier for me? Would it have spared me this constant doubt, this exhaustion of becoming?

And the answer doesn’t rush to correct me.

Freedom isn’t always light, it says. Sometimes it feels like standing at the edge of something vast, with no rails to lean against. Sometimes the body misses the certainty of chains – not because they were good, but because they were familiar.

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You’re not wrong for wondering whether less choice might have been kinder.

You’re just tired of carrying the weight of possibility alone.

Then I ask the question that hurts the most.

Am I really your Azadi?

And the answer comes slower now.

Azadi isn’t the absence of pain. It’s the right to feel it without being punished for it.

It’s not just freedom from – it’s freedom into.

And that part takes time. Sometimes generations. You may be the first woman who didn’t just survive, but had to decide who she is without being told.

That is not ease. That is frontier work.Pioneers rarely feel free while they are crossing.They feel exposed. Unsure. Alone.

You don’t have to be happy to justify what you broke open. You don’t have to feel fulfilled to make it meaningful.

And you don’t have to know yet what kind of life you’re drafting to deserve the pen in your hand.

You are not failing at freedom because it hurts. You are learning its weight.

And if I imagine you – whoever you are, whoever I’m speaking to across time – looking at me now, I don’t see disappointment.

I see recognition. Because even asking these questions is something you were never allowed to do.