After that, life opened up wider.
A group of my friends in the compound planned a trip overseas and asked if I wanted to join.
Of course I wanted to.
In my last life, my old age had been spent trapped inside four walls, first in service to David, then in that nursing home bed where even dignity had become a luxury.
Now I had enough money to live comfortably in the compound, but if I really wanted to splurge, I needed more.
So after thinking it over, I decided to sell the old house.
The first person to come see it was Jason.
His eyes were red, but this time he didn’t dare get too close.
“Mom,” he said hoarsely, “we lived here for decades. Can you really bear to sell it? Dad misses you. Megan misses you. I miss you too.”
Then he lowered his voice.
“The second Dad became paralyzed, that woman ran off with money. He says all the time that if it had been you, you never would have abandoned him.”
He started crying by the end.
“We know we were wrong.”
I looked at him and felt nothing but tiredness.
In the end, he took out a loan and bought the house himself.
I’d heard his company was close to bankruptcy, which made the whole thing even stranger.
Why spend money on a house he could barely afford when he was drowning already?
But that was no longer my problem.
The day before my trip, one of the guards told me someone was waiting at the gate.
It was Megan.
She looked thinner than before.
In her hand was a box of mangosteens, my favorite.
When she saw me, she forced a smile. “Mom… Jason told me you live here now. If you had such powerful family connections, why did you never tell us?”
“Because I didn’t want your respect to depend on it,” I said.
She lowered her eyes, shame flickering across her face.
I didn’t ask the guard to open the gate.
So she stood there outside the bars and held out the fruit.
I didn’t take it.
“Mom, I’ve thought about a lot lately. My brother and I were immature. Can you forgive us?”
“You’re both in your thirties,” I said coldly. “That isn’t immaturity. That’s selfishness.”
Her eyes filled immediately.
There was a time when one tear from her would have broken me.
I would have pulled her into my arms, kissed her hair, told her everything was okay.
But all I could remember now was how she had spoken about my kidney, about my genes, about me.
I told her to leave.
Then I turned and went back inside.
A little while later, rain started pouring down.
The guard later told me Megan had stood there in the storm for more than three hours before a man finally forced her into a car and drove her away.
The next morning, I boarded the bus to the airport with my friends.
At first, traveling scared me.
The unfamiliar languages.
The airports.
The crowds.
The sense that the world was too big and I had wasted too much time already.
But little by little, I relaxed.
I started learning photography and took beautiful pictures of my friends.
I stopped being afraid to ask strangers for help.
I even started chatting with foreigners in simple English and got better with practice.
And as the world opened itself to me, I realized something painful and freeing at the same time.
My family had not only trapped my body.
They had trapped my mind.
Once I saw beyond that, there was no going back.
When I returned, I threw myself into life even more.
I picked up old interests.
Started new hobbies.
Even went into a small business venture with some of the women from the compound.
I was busier than ever.
Tired, yes.
But the kind of tired that comes from living, not from being consumed.