The Great Escape

         I used to live in a giant igloo-like dome on a frozen lake. I had never been outside the dome, and wasn’t really sure if there was an outside. That dome was the entire universe, as far as I knew.

         For a long time I liked living there. I had a good time with the other people who lived in the dome. We used to skate around on the ice and do some really crazy stuff. After a while though, it wasn’t as fun as it used to be. I started to get embarrassed about the crazy things I did. For some reason I couldn’t stop doing those things, and after awhile the embarrassment turned into anger. I was angry at myself for doing those things, and I was angry because I kept doing them. I was angry about my apparent lack of control.

         Since I couldn’t seem to stop embarrassing myself in front of the other people, I finally drove them away. I didn’t know where they went, and I didn’t care. I just wanted to stop feeling the way I felt. When they went away, I felt better because there was no one to see me acting crazy.

         Embracing my solitude, I stopped trying to hide my crazy behavior. I let it act freely for several more years. Gradually I began to realize that I still felt bad about what I was doing, even though there was no one there to see it. My anger returned, and with a vengeance. The harder I tried to stop doing those things, the more I seemed to do them. This infuriated me, and I started to hate and despise myself. I would constantly berate myself as I continued to do things that fueled my self-loathing. I even found myself thinking about suicide as a way to stop the madness. I would skate around for hours and days in the agony of self-torment, beating myself up. I thought there would be no end to it unless I ended it myself.

         One day I realized the ice I was skating on was beginning to crack. I skated around the dome, inspecting the ice floor. The cracks were everywhere. Behind me, the ice was even breaking up in places. At this realization I was simultaneously elated and terrified. Merciful death lay just under the ice, but despite the level of hate I had for myself, I knew I didn’t really want to die, not yet. I raced around the dome in a panic, searching for a way out before the ice gave way beneath me. The wall of the dome flew past me in a smooth blur, and just as I was about to accept my doom, I came upon a door.

         I paused in front of the door. I had no idea what was on the other side, and my fear of the unknown was immense. The fear of the certain death on this side was even greater though, and at last I opened it. On the other side there was more water, with chunks of ice floating in it. However, directly in front of the door were twelve big stone steps sticking up out of the water, leading to dry land. I had never seen dry land before, and it looked fabulous. It was huge, much bigger than the dome that I had been in for so long. There was sunshine and trees and grass, and people who looked so happy and full of life that it made my heart ache. They looked like they felt the way that I wanted to feel. Some of them walked out onto the stones to the doorway where I stood.

         They told me they knew where I had been, and that they had once been there too. They told me about life outside the dome, on dry land. I wanted to be happy like them, so I carefully walked across those twelve steps towards the shore with them. Some of the steps were slippery, and I was afraid I might plunge into the icy water and die, but they held onto me and got me safely ashore.

         After I had been on land for some time, I began to realize how much there was to see and do. My new friends told me to take it slow and not try to do too much at once. Of course, I tried to do everything at once anyway, but after a while I calmed down and tried things one at a time. One day I realized that I was really happy, and had been for a while. I was enjoying myself again, for the first time in many years. Knowing that I could continue to be this way forever made me even happier.

         I walked back down to the shore once, and looked out at the dome where I had isolated myself for so long. I was surprised to see how small and shabby it was. What I had once believed to be the entire universe was just a dirty little igloo on a tiny frozen pond. I turned my back and walked away, vowing to remember that place and to never return to it.