Flying without falling

I love The Awakening by Kate Chopin.

Sometimes at night when I can’t sleep I flip it open to a page at random, just because.

This is my favorite line from it. Even the first time I read it, it stuck with me.

"There was no despondency when she fell asleep that night, nor was there hope when she woke in the morning."

Because THIS. IS. LIFE. I should probably say “this is my life” because I can’t speak for everyone. But I think it speaks for many.

One day runs into another in a quite ordinary fashion, and if we’re lucky, we forget that we’ve settled.

I used to have reoccurring dreams where I’d be at work, or at the grocery store, or some other benign situation... and suddenly a burst of wind would carry me away like I was Piglet with the ballon in the Winne the Pooh cartoons.

But here’s the thing... It didn’t feel like I was flying, it felt like I was disappearing. I could see everything below me and the view was incredible, but I was no longer a part of it.

I didn’t worry about how I’d feel when I fell back down from the sky, what I’d have to grab onto to find my footing again, because I knew I wasn’t coming back.

Sometimes I wonder what those dreams meant. I spend a lot of time putting on my best face for the roles I have to perform. Employee, friend, best friend, daughter, sister. It gives me a purpose, and I’m grateful for each role in its own way. There is an abundance of reciprocated love in my life. But there is a small despair in knowing that I can’t always live up to my own expectations or the expectations of others.

So I guess that’s why I dream about running away and never coming back. But that’s not what I really want, which is to exist solely in a state of pure authenticity and raw experiences. That’s something I’ve been able to achieve through writing.

Here’s to flying without falling