Leaving..

This story was published in Campus magazine, July '12.

The airport was vibrant and busy. Laila looked at her watch and realized she still had forty-five minutes to her flight. She relaxed in her chair and played with the ticket in her hands, remembering the words she had written in the letter she left on the console at her parents' house that morning. She had written that letter a few months back when she decided that she couldn't take in any more pressure.

Her stomach pains were back, but different this time. They were knots of anxiety, along with butterflies from the childish excitement she was feeling. She remembered the last time she had that feeling; it was about 20 years ago when she stood on the stage in the school choir for the first time – she was only seven.  She felt it again a few years after when she was one of the finalists at the art competition in her school. She was 12 at the time, with promising talents and life full of arts and music. It was only one year later that her parents told her it was time to take her studies seriously and quit all the "child's play".

She did as she was told without questioning mummy and daddy; as it was an accepted fact in her family – parents knew what's best for their kids, full stop. She did take her studies seriously from then on and her life changed significantly, with her parents taking control of her every step. Her enthusiasm and interest in every activity there is, turned into a quiet, composed manner and solitary studies in the library. In just a few years, she was a straight A student with no more than two or three close friends.

Laila recalled her inexplicable stomach pains; the ones she later realized happened every time she did something against her will - just to please her parents. The first time she had to let go of art competitions, and the application she wrote for a business school she did not want to go to. She bitterly remembered acing the courses she loathed just so she wouldn't disappoint her father and the elective courses she couldn't apply for because she was "nicely" advised to focus only on her finance and economics. She recalled starting a career in investment banking that she had never been looking forward to, and reaching a success in it that she had to pretend to be proud of.

The last few months in her so-called successful career were like preparing for a revolution. Her stomach pains were getting too much to bear and she knew just what the right cure for them would be. She had developed an interest in fashion design earlier in her college years; a hobby she did not dare confess, not even to her friends. She used her researching skills to find herself the right schools of arts – abroad! Putting her savings together – and they were a lot, seeing as how she had just a couple of friends and no significant other; she applied for an Arts school in France and booked her ticket three months in advance. She made arrangements to stay with a foster family and packed light so as not to get her parents' attention. Experience had taught her that there was no use confronting them or trying to convince them of her dreams – they would never understand.

Heart-breaks were inevitable, Laila knew that; but she was tired of it being hers. She wrote a careful letter, making sure it's sensitive enough, especially for her mum. She said goodbye to the house that had witnessed her oppression and the burial of her inner self for years, promising it that she would not come back until she was an established fashion designer with her own business and a stronger character to face her oppressors with. The thought gave her a pang of guilt, which she subsided at once. She had every right to think of her parents as the prosecutors of her dreams and thus her whole existence...

Laila was awoken from her daze by the sound of the electronic voice calling for her flight. She got up and walked slowly, imagining all the amazing experiences that were yet to come and the butterflies and childish excitement that will come with it. She boarded the plane and never once glanced behind.