True Freedom

There was this horrible, sucking sensation in my gut and this animal panic that came with this inexplicable epiphany that if I didn’t leave now, I never would.

Previously…

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The following document has been transcribed from writings found on a notepad in Room 1104 at the [REDACTED] in Fredrick, Maryland (D.O.A. 11/02/2010) by field agents embedded in the Federal Bureau of Investigation investigating a reported sighting of known wanted criminal [REDACTED] (Designation W.O.I.-104). Purpose of writing is unclear. As of present, [REDACTED]/W.O.I.-104’s whereabouts are unknown. Various investigations pertaining to their attributed criminal activity are ongoing.

It was surprisingly easy leaving home. I always thought it wouldn’t be, and when the time came, I’d find myself getting feet so cold I’m surprised I didn’t lose some toes to frostbite. I’m not sure why.

Almost every day of my life from five years old on I’d fantasize about making a break for freedom. From that quote-unquote “school”, the teachers, the tests, that house out in the woods and my so-called parents. I’d be seven, eight, nine, and I’d lay awake at night, staring at the ceiling, thinking about where I’d go and what I’d do when I got there. Of course, the logistics were never considered. Eight year olds don’t really think about the how when it comes to getting to New York or wherever, just what they’ll do when they get there. I’m pretty sure that I thought I could make that long walk if I really wanted to. I’d just figure it out as I went along.

I wasn’t married to the idea of escaping to New York. It was just a big city and one I heard about a lot so I figured it was as good a place as any to go. I would have been happy anywhere that wasn’t where I was. I remember my dad bought me this big book about Japan when I was nine and it did something to me. For years I was convinced that was where I’d land, one day. All the pictures of that endless sprawl of electric towers, narrow streets drenched in neon, flashing signs and glowing tubes twisted into illegible characters of an unknown and exotic language. There was a romance to it I couldn’t explain other than it just looked cool. It might as well have been an alien planet to a kid who’s world consisted of a remote home, an even more remote school, a whole lot of back roads, and not much else.

I thought about Korea a lot, too. There was this insane dream I humored when I was really young that when I got there, I’d just so happen to stumble across one of my biological parents. I liked to think that the universe would just pull the right strings to make that happen against all odds, like it would be some kind of reward I was overdue for to make up for the underwhelming and rather lackluster life I’d had up until that point.

When I left, though, I was old enough to realize that I wasn’t getting to Seoul or Tokyo or New York. I doubted that I’d even make it up the road to Baltimore. I’d be lucky if I got two towns over. I had no money. I had no skills. Teenage girls tend not to make it very long on the streets before something bad happens. If I tried to hack in the woods I’d probably eat the wrong sort of berries and die with my pants around my ankles and my liquified spleen spewing out of my ass.

I was fifteen and at a point in my life where I still didn’t fully understand the situation I was in, but I’d cottoned onto the fact that there was more to my living arrangement, my life, and even myself than I’d been told. I knew I hadn’t just been dumped in a baby box in Busan and adopted by two American intelligence agents out of the goodness of their hearts. I knew if I ran there’d be men in suits and shades combing the entire Eastern Seaboard looking to drag me back and I knew that if they found me, they’d spare no expenses to see that I never had another opportunity to get away again.

With that in mind, you’d think that I might have put a little more thought into my plan. Maybe I would have if I’d even known the day I left was going to be the day that I left. I couldn’t tell you why I did it when I did. I don’t think there was a good reason. There was no knock-down, drag-out fight with my parents. No traumatic event, no failed test, no impending doom or clear and present threat.

I was just lying there in my bed one night as I often did, watching the ceiling fan spin in lazy circles, and this thought just sort of popped into my head - I can’t live like this anymore.

It was far from the first time I’d had that thought, but it was distinctly different than before. It didn’t just fade away like a passing urge to use the bathroom or listen to a specific song. It was demanding and it was urgent. I was struck by this intense, smothering weight that fell on me all at once. There was this horrible, sucking sensation in my gut and this animal panic that came with this inexplicable epiphany that if I didn’t leave now, I never would.

I felt like I knew on some deep, fundamental level that I had to go and I had to do it right then or I’d regret it for the rest of my life. That there was going to be no better time than then.

It didn’t even feel like it was my thought, but one inserted into my head by some other alien entity.

Was it divine inspiration from a higher power? I tend to think it was a psychotic break. Whatever it was, I was incapable of ignoring it.

I got out of bed, put on some clothes, stuffed as much as I could fit in my backpack, and that was that. It was late enough that even my night owl of a father was asleep. I thought about trying to break into his study and see if I couldn’t find anything useful for self-defense, but I didn’t want to risk waking him up trying to jimmy the lock with a wire coat hanger. I took a knife with a sleeve from the kitchen instead and shoved some food in the backpack for good measure. Before I left, I turned around and looked at the gas stove for a long, long moment.

I thought about doing something stupid.

It would have been so easy. Really, it would have. Leave it running. Light a candle in another room. A couple hours later… I dunno. Something like that. I wasn’t sure it would work and, more importantly, I couldn’t decide if the people who raised me deserved what would happen if it did. I had a laundry list of reasons to hate them. Even today I still feel as if I do, sometimes. They never abused me physically or verbally, but they didn’t need to. They abused me in a much worse way. They aided and abetted the people who’d robbed me of any semblance of a normal life. Those people signed their paychecks. They were active participants in the project I’d been shoved into with no consent.

Would I have been within my rights to do something stupid?

I like to think so. But I didn’t.

I left out the backdoor and tripped the motion sensing lights. I knew they was there, I knew it would turn on, and I knew that if it did wake my parents up they’d think it was a deer or some other animal that had set it off, but I broke into a sprint towards the treeline anyways.

I don’t recall much of what happened over the following days. I do remember that it wasn’t much fun. I didn’t bring a flashlight so I just kind of tripped my way through the underbrush until I figured I was far enough away from the house to lay down and rest. I probably hadn’t put too much distance between me and the house, but after snagging my foot on a root and nearly face planting on a rock and busting out my teeth, I thought it would be smart to lay down and wait for the sun to rise.

No sooner did the sun come up on the first day of the rest of my life did I realize that I wasn’t just in way over my head, I’d jumped headlong into an abyssal deep end without a life jacket.

This was in the dead of summer. August. Virginia isn’t a very nice place to be during that time of year unless you like sweating in place that aren’t supposed to sweat. Though I’d brought some food, I’d made an amateur mistake by failing to take into consideration that I’d need water, too, and I wasn’t so dumb that I thought I could just drink out of any random creek or stream.

I did it anyways. It was nothing short of a miracle I didn’t contract giardia, then. That would be something I’d become intimately acquainted with later in life. Not fun.

I had no idea where the fuck I was. For all I knew, I’d been wandering in circles since I left the house and I’d end up walking right back to it. I pretty much just picked a direction and started walking until I found a road. There was a sign that told me the town of Great Falls was a few miles up the road, and I figured that I had no where better to be so I might as well go that way. I kept to the woods and stayed just close enough to the road so that I didn’t lose my bearings. Every time I saw a car, I’d crouch down behind a bush or get behind a tree. Every black vehicle I saw I was certain had some goon that was out looking for me. I couldn’t imagine they weren’t.

I also found out pretty quick that I was woefully under-equipped to walk so much. I’d never been particularly gifted when it came to athletics, but a whole lot of sitting on my ass in air conditioned spaces was proving to be a poor use of my time. I’d never shed the excess weight from my little stint in the arcade, either, so I spent a lot of time resting. I’d sit beneath the shade of a tree, eat peanut butter strait out of the jar with my fingers like a starving crackhead, and wrestle with whether or not I should just give up, turn around, and face whatever consequences were waiting for me back at home.

The urge was stronger than you might think. My mind concocted elaborate scenarios in which the government goons that I knew were pulling my strings would just open their arms and welcome me back with a finger wag and a, Now, don’t you run off again! I even thought that the people who raised me might actually express something resembling relief when they opened the door to find me standing on the other side. Maybe they’d even hug me. Tell me that they were worried sick. Prepare something hot and delicious and we’d all sit at the dinner table for the first time and I could pretend that they really were my parents.

I wanted to believe that might happen. Really, I did.

I think it was the heat getting to me, more than anything.

At the lumbering pace I was moving, I didn’t make it to Great Falls for another two days. I slept on grass where I could find it and used my backpack as an ad hoc pillow. Was it pleasant? Fuck no. I hated it. Even at night, the humidity was stifling and I could barely sleep and when I woke up one morning, there was a snake crawling over my leg and a spider in my hair. They could probably hear me screaming all the way at the Pentagon.

I can remember sitting there on my hands and knees, sobbing and whimpering with snot running down my face and vomit still in my mouth, in disbelief that this was it - this was my life now. I wanted freedom? Well, this was the price; sleeping on the dirt with reptiles and insects.

Never before in my brief life had I ever been so acutely aware that actions do indeed have consequences.

When I got to Great Falls, I know I had to look a wreck and after sweating like a whore in church for two days straight, and I smelled even worse. Unlike drinking water, I’d had the foresight to bring a hat and some sunglasses to make a vague attempt to disguise myself if the need arose, as if a short, dumpy Asian girl who looked like she slept in a dumpster wasn’t going to raise eyebrows wherever I went. I walked into a gas station outside of town and spent one of my few precious dollars on a coke. The feeling of relief I got when that sweet, sugary, carbonated junk touched my tongue… I think I’ve been chasing that high ever since. Probably the single most satisfying drink I’ve ever had in my entire life.

I drank it all in one go, so fast I nearly threw it back up on the floor the poor clerk had just finished mopping.

After that, I found myself standing there in the parking lot, dumbstruck and silent as I realized that I had no idea what to do next. Frankly, I hadn’t thought that far ahead because I didn’t expect to even make it out of my backyard.

I’d gotten what I wanted. I was truly free. There was nowhere I needed to be. Nothing I needed to do. No tests to take or teachers to please or a room to clean or chores to do.

I wondered if the sinking feeling in my chest was what freedom felt like. If it was, it was a lot less liberating than I’d imagined it would be. The term buyer’s remorse came to my mind, as did the epiphany that, unpleasant as that sensation was, it’d behoove me to learn to deal with it.

I’d be lucky if it didn’t go away. The alternative, I suspected, would be much worse, and probably ended in a windowless cell.

I won’t bore you with the small details of the next couple days. I’m not sure how much I remember anyways, since I feel like my brain has consciously blocked most of it. It was a lot of walking, sitting, woods, and sleeping in the rough. Northern Virginia was a lot less built up than it is today. It didn’t take long to find myself in what felt like the middle of nowhere. I couldn’t have been forty-five minutes from the heart of the god damn evil empire itself by car and yet I felt as if I was half-way across the world from anyone or anything.

I learned to steal. Not well, but I did. I mean, I still got caught more than once, but the cashiers and clerks never said a word. They just nodded and jerked their heads towards the door, telling me to split before they were obligated to tell a manager. I’d say it was the only display of working class solidarity I’d ever seen, but I’d have had to been working to be part of the working class. There was only one time anyone made a fuss and, as it turned out, I could actually run a lot faster and a lot further than I did during those tests back at school when I needed to.

I did my best to steer clear of civilization, for the most part. Stopping at gas stations was an unfortunate necessity, if only because I wasn’t sure I was comfortable shitting in the woods just yet and bathroom sinks made for a great place to refill the coke bottle that had become my impromptu canteen, but if I came across anything more developed than a barn, I gave it a wide berth. If there was a road, I’d wait until any passing traffic was gone and bolt across it. If I heard any aircraft, I’d lay down and I wouldn’t move until I couldn’t hear it. If they were looking for me, and I was certain they were, helicopters were probably the quickest way to find me.

I avoided any property I came across, too. There were plenty of homes out in the boonies on big parcels of lands locked away behind fences I had no interest in climbing over. You don’t do that in rural Virginia unless you want to find yourself at the wrong end of a gun. It made the going a bit difficult. I’d end up having to back off, walk around the perimeter, and hope that I was moving in the same direction I was before. Not that I had any real destination in mind. My only real goal was to keep moving, stay hidden, and not to starve.

Humans are remarkably adaptable creatures. Have you ever noticed that? A few days of living rough and hard, dirty and simple, and I can’t say I was particularly good at it. Drop me on a remote island or the middle of the desert without 7/11’s to poach from and I’d have been dead in a day.

But I was, in a strange sort of way, coming to enjoy it. What had begun as an intolerable exercise in torture, spurred by desperation and fear, became hard yet rewarding work. Sure, I can’t say I enjoyed the constant smell of sweat or just how gross my clothes felt against my skin after the first day, and if I ever have to sleep alone, exposed, and in the grass again, it’ll be too soon. But the first time you do anything is the most difficult.

As I adjusted, that sour taste I’d identified as freedom, true and uncut, gradually became a little more sweet. What I’d first seen as this intimidating, gnarled sprawl of infinite unenviable choices stopped looking like a bottomless pit of suffocating darkness, but a buffet of endless opportunities that had been unveiled now that my day-to-day responsibilities were absent.

I enjoyed not having class. I was relieved I had no one, not my parents nor my teachers, breathing down my neck. I relished sleeping when I wanted and waking when I pleased, even if I’d do so and find a rabbit nibbling on one of my shoelaces or a curious fox sniffing at my hair. But were those not the kind of spontaneous, unexpected experiences that I’d always hoped to have? The kind of things that never happened inside sterile, windowless schools with cinder block walls and doors that lock on both sides. The inconveniences of the heat and dirt and intrusions of nature felt like acceptable prices to pay for a ticket to the world outside my little per-constructed pen.

It’s curious how being in a life or death situation changes your outlook on things like that. I know it sounds hyperbolic to say that I was in mortal peril, stomping around the woods of northern Virginia, not more than an hour by car from the nation’s Capitol, but hindsight affords a view of what happened out there in which there were many, many ways and moments where my little excursion could have gone very wrong, very quickly. I was keenly aware of that fact, most of all that the greatest threat to my life lied in my own stupidity - or perhaps ignorance of the natural world might be a more kind way of phrasing it.

I wasn’t as concerned with it as you might think. Not about my safety. Not about much of anything, really.

You don’t get the luxury of fretting over your weight when you’re licking the last dregs of peanut butter off you fingers without knowing where your next calories will come from or when and even how you’ll get them. You don’t worry about how your hair looks when you have no way of washing it. Being ugly doesn’t matter when you’re alone and there’s nobody to see you.

All those stupid little nagging fears, anxieties, worries, and whatnot that tend to pester you like tiny biting pests - you realize just how little they matter. It becomes painfully clear that you never actually knew what a genuine problem was and all the shit you spent hours, days, months, even years agonizing over weren’t real issues. Having problems that stupid are a luxury many aren’t afforded.

It all becomes paradoxically easy when the only questions that actually matter are how am I going to eat today, how do I make this water last, and can I lay down tonight confident that I’ll wake up when the sun rises.

I’m not saying it’s a good way to live. It’s primitive and filthy and it takes a toll on you when you spend so much time operating in a reactive state. But, as I said - it’s simple. There’s virtue to that.

It was a surprise when I made it all the way to Leesburg for a number of reasons. For one, I was still alive. I was nothing short of ecstatic that I hadn’t tripped over my own shoes and cracked my skull open on a rock, nor have a rattlesnake slither up one of my pant legs while I slept.

For another, I hadn’t been caught. Not by the cops. Not by the feds. If they were looking for me, either I was a lot smarter than I was giving myself credit for, or they were a lot worse at their jobs than I would have guessed.

Now, Leesburg was only thirty miles up the road from where I lived, but it felt a lot further away back then than it does today. Given the pitiful shape I was in, getting there on foot in five days, let alone at all, was worthy of celebration. Unwisely, perhaps, I bean to think that I might just be alright.

This whole thing might just work. I might not just be able to stick it out on my own; it might even enjoy it. Maybe one day, I’d even manage to get all the way across the Pacific and see the lights of Tokyo. Hell, maybe I’d take a detour and try and find my biological parents. Not before I stopped in New York, though, and got one of those stupid big sandwiches from a Jewish deli I’d seen in a movie once.

As I bed down for another night in the woods just beyond town, so close that I could see the lights from the hill I’d decided would make for a good place to rest, I was comfortable for the first time since I’d left the house. My backpack felt softer and the grass beneath me less bothersome. Again, I thought that this was it - this was my life now.

I supposed it was better than being a lab rat.

The thing about being a lab rat is that you never know what they’re really doing to you. They might offer some small explanation once in while, if you pester them enough or the experiment calls for it, but they’ll never actually tell you the whole truth. Do you need to explain to a rat why they’re in a cage? What utility would it provide if you did? Would they even understand you if you tried?

You can imagine the confusion and panic I felt when I woke up the next day to find my father standing over me. Even to this day, my hackles raise just thinking about. It was such a shock that I almost couldn’t believe that I wasn’t having a nightmare. It didn’t make sense until I found out years later that the dentist employed at our school wasn’t just there to make sure we were flossing. It wasn’t just fillings that went into our teeth.

My father flashed a smile best described as patronizing and said, “Good morning, Abbie.”

He said it as casually as if I’d come out of my room and found him with a cup of coffee, reading the papers on the couch.

There were a handful of other men standing behind him. If you didn’t know any better, you’d think they’d all come straight from an office, what with their pressed khaki slacks and professional button-downs. I remember one guy had this heinous floral-patterned tie with bright pink flamingos on it. It sticks out in my memory because of the absurdity of it juxtaposed against the leather shoulder holster with a Mini Uzi in one sleeve and extra magazines in the other.

They all chuckled to themselves as I sat up.

It was a joke, I realized. One big, mean joke that they let play out until it stopped being funny and it was time to return to work.

I flinched when my father moved his hand. I half expected him to draw his own firearm holstered on his hip and shove it in my face. Instead, when my eyes opened, his arm was extended and his hand upturned, open and empty, right in front of my face.

He seemed mildly amused when he asked me - “Did you have fun?”

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Remember - always brush your teeth twice a day and don’t forget to floss. You can’t trust dentists.

Also, does anyone else think that government spooks had more drip cooler when they just looked like someone random white dad from the Chicago suburbs?

This beats the suits and shades combo any day, in my opinion.