As soon as the thought finished forming in my mind what I felt wasn't relief. It wasn't triumph, or clarity, or even pain fading.
It was the soundless sensation of something breaking inside my mind, an internal fracture so clean and sudden that it stole my breath. Not shattering, not collapsing, but cracking, like ancient chains finally giving way after being pulled taut for far too long.
I couldn't see them, couldn't touch them, yet I had always known they were there: invisible constraints wound around my thoughts, my instincts, my very sense of self. Limits I had mistaken for caution.
Barriers I had called discipline. Locks I had believed were simply part of who I was. And now they were failing, one link at a time, splintering under the accumulated pressure of everything I had endured.
