Sixteenth Day

Release.

Today, I'm thinking about getting out. I'm not sure if this is good for me - whether fantasizing about release will help me stay positive, or whether inventing a myth of my own release will lead me into a world less well-founded on what is actual. In particular, I'm thinking about whether I'd prefer to have the opportunity to call my family, so they could be there to pick me up when the gates part, or whether I'd rather slip back into their lives as though nothing had happened. (Like, I think, Agatha Christie. There's a famous and controversial French lawyer, whose name won't come to mind, with eight years missing from his biography. No-one knows what happened to him. It's true, I'm sure.)

Or whether I'd rather walk out of here and build a new life. Which I wouldn't.

The reason I have my release, and more than that, the practicalities of my release, on my mind, is that I not only now have an audience, but an Audience, in the sense of an opportunity to communicate with someone with power over me. This is a bit like a prayer. (Maybe delete that. I'm not sure I want to appear religious.) (No, leave it. Sacreligious is exactly how I want to appear.) I need to know what to ask for, and I can't decide whether to ask to be let out straight away or to have a phone call first.

I believe I will be released, but I also believe that probably, if not somewhere then at some time, there will be prisoners who are not.

Reader,

(Who are you? Are you young? Tall or short? Blonde or brunette? What did your parents do? How do you get on with your colleagues? Are you happy in your work, reading this, or would you rather leave? How is your love-life? Do you believe in yourself? Do you believe in God? Do you believe in the need to believe in oneself?)

this is what I would like you to do: let me go.