“What do you want?”
“I just want to cry- all the time,” Fleabag answers.
This line brought me to tears, my first time watching
And the second,
And the third.
I identified with this ruined, imperfect character,
One who desired to be liberated from her constant guilt and
Life’s perpetual torments.
She made me wonder what true freedom was;
She asked the age old question of if waking up and being able to go and do whatever you want is
Freedom
Or loneliness?
On one hand Fleabag was totally and utterly free;
She could take the bus on her own and
She could flirt and she could
Laugh and she could find
Pleasure in whatever stranger’s company she desired just because
She could.
And yet she could do all this because she had nobody to
Reprimand her for doing so.
And she had nobody to care about the times she would come home.
Is this weird, flightless bird inside of me craving
Freedom
Or loneliness?
Is she telling me to run away as far as possible from those I love and care for or
My responsibilities?
Is she urging me to forsake the life I hold dear or
Embrace a life which would hold me dearer?
Would her passage be fruitful, abandoning
Her pitiful stresses in pursuit of happiness,
Nature and new love,
Fresh, staleness gone?
Would the spirit which drives me to write lines of poems over
Pages of schoolwork
Encourage my unbridled spirit to run wild,
And in doing so, scar its hooves and force splinters in its knees?
Alas, the direction of my life is split into a circling crossroads;
Which way will I go?
Will I say hello to the patriot?
The scholar?
The traveler?
The white-collared worker with the pencil skirt or the
Lax uniform of the office employee?
Or will I shed my clothing in favor of nature’s embrace,
The comfort of modern heating for the soil’s warmth
Guiding me, feeding me, healing me?
The omniscient narrator feeds me images of the selves I could be;
Alas, but I have many lives to live them all.
Freedom and loneliness call my name;
May the guiding breeze of the leaves and the concrete tame my
Restless spirit.
