The wind’s hand brushed against my cheek, its soft fingers rippled through my hair. Heat was mixed in with the slow breeze, gently warming my skin, as the sun lazily shined down. I rubbed the back of my neck, sweat gathered on my small hands. The rest spiraled down my spine, an uncomfortable luke-warm mixture, making me shiver in the steaming weather.

At the age of four I was standing at the edge of the playground, my curious eyes tracking a boy rounding the bend of the sidewalk. I was watching the two wheels on his red bicycle going round and round. His long hair hanging into his determined eyes, his short legs pedaling in circles. Soon the boy was not rounding the corner anymore, the shape of his face becoming a detailed outline, then a sketch, then a picture capturing the color of his brown eyes that met mine as the speed of the wheels slowly wound down. He finally came to a stop, sweat slathering his shining face, gasping for oxygen. With small hands giving a good grip to the handle bars, his legs swung off the red bicycle. Balancing it with one hand, the wheels started to squeak across the playground as he wheeled the bike towards me.

He handed me the handles, and I gripped the sticky surface. Carefully wheeling the bike, I did not realize the danger that I would be in if I fell. Being a full beginner, I had never even set foot on a bicycle pedal. Hoisting myself up to the leather seat, I balanced with one foot on the ground. The boy had said to go, but I was still balancing. Letting my four year old instincts take over, I pedaled, gaining speed in each stride. I fell in the first 10 seconds. The bike hitting the ground, scratching the surface of the concrete at the same time my soft knees scraped across the gravel. I wailed and cried until my parents picked me up and whisked me away. But there was the 9 seconds before.

My life is a story. A story that can be told, written into words, performed into plays or to be treasured, hidden away, forgotten. I will never tell my story, for then there would be no secrets, no excitement to be held. No, I would rather release each chapter inch by inch, leaving the rest up to you to replace the pieces that I have not told. Well, there was a chapter I have been waiting to tell you, one some of you might have taken for granted, one feeling that I wish I could have kept. Freedom you see, is what I used to experience, in those brief moments that I would give so much to take back. To keep forever, to keep the world from tainting them.

In those seconds I felt unstoppable. I was ignorant to all dangers, letting myself be carried along with each bump in the pavement. The wind whistling away the sweat from my face. I had let go of something in reality. It was as if the world came to a stop and only I kept on moving, only I was fast enough to catch up with the wind. I was in my own world. A world where I could fly, a world where I was in control, where I was independent. My world. Where there was real freedom.