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Heavier tears rolled down my cheeks.
I didn’t know why this library made me so sad. Why standing in a room full of the written word and pages with the ability to whisk me away from this lifetime filled me with aching despair.
When I was a little girl, my favourite Walt Disney was Beauty and the Beast—not because Belle captured the heart of an enchanted monster, but because she was so smart. A bookworm in a village of simpletons. A woman hungry for knowledge, all while trapped in a town where doting on an oaf of a husband was her future.
I’d related to her because it seemed her life mirrored those of other women in history. All the manors and strongholds I’d visited had portraits of barely smiling women all subservient to their men. Sitting beneath them with a masculine hand planted on their fragile shoulders—a horde of children playing in their skirts all while the lord of the estate puffed on a pipe with importance.
They were nothing more than property.
Chattel.
A belonging with an expiration date.
My breathing turned shallow.
My blood fizzled with horror.
He’s going to use me like that man used Peter.
He’s going to hurt me.
Others are going to rape me—
Something snapped inside, opening the floodgates of terror.
Air stopped.
Fear drowned.
And for the first time in my life…I had a panic attack.
I-I can’t breathe.
I can’t do this—
Help.
Someone. Anyone. Please!
I spiralled deeper and deeper into the clutches of despair.
Lack of air.
Of hope.
Of freedom.
All of it.
Gone.
I wasn’t proud of it.
I couldn’t stop it.
I dropped to my knees and gave in.
Silent sobs wracked my body.
