The Path Away From You
“There is freedom waiting for you, On the breezes of the sky, And you ask “What if I fall?” Oh, but my darling, What if you fly?”
I love this quote by poet Erin Hansen.
It has recently helped me to find my courage.
It’s ironic, though, that this quote speaks of freedom.
Moving forward toward our dreams does not mean initial freedom.
Maybe it frees you in your truth and eventually will lead to more freedom,
but freedom is lacking unless you only work on your dreams and
nothing else.
April 4th is “D” day, and it also happens to be my birthday.
I am taking a vacation from both jobs that week to work on the opening of my website.
That has been the plan since the beginning of the year.
Other than sharing this with my assistant manager/closest friend, Karen, the biggest supporter of my writing and dreams, I have told no one.
Until now.
I have been afraid of not being ready.
I have been afraid of it not being perfect.
For the last two weeks, I have been getting in my way, making the same excuses I gave myself for not publishing my writings or starting social media sooner.
Something else that has held me back is having to make changes to my social media schedule.
I struggle with change when it means I must give less to my prior commitments.
Regardless, the change in my schedule is something that I am fine-tuning to make sure that I have no excuse to meet my deadline.
I know that nowhere does it say that I have to do things a certain way, but the bottom line is that I must spend at least two nights a week away from social media to work on my website.
Am I afraid of not succeeding?
No. I know it won’t be perfect to start.
But I won’t fail.
I will eventually succeed if I work on it as hard as I have worked for others.
What I am afraid of is even less possibility of you.
The quote above has a part in it that has been stuck in my mind repeatedly.
That part that says, “What if I fall…?”
It reminds me of childhood and having those dreams about falling…those that felt like if I didn’t somehow wake myself, I would die.
When I think of this, what overtakes me is this feeling of almost being suffocated.
There is this pressure weighing on me.
I feel almost trapped within the confines of my responsibilities.
None of that bothered me until I found your eyes.
My dreams were all I wanted to think of, and I wanted to be so busy that I wouldn’t notice anything else missing.
How is it I miss you when I have just found you?
The tears came tonight.
I want different.
I have been doing my best only to think and not feel.
Now, all I want is to feel and not think.
My second favorite picture of you is where you are looking away from the camera- this photo makes me wonder what you were thinking.
Ironically, my favorite picture shows your eyes looking at me, while in the other, you aren’t even looking in the camera's direction.
I am very aware that sometimes I am a contradiction.
I find myself repeatedly thinking of just being next to you, sitting in silence, and tracing the lines in the palms of your hands.
To be enough, there in the stillness, just as we are.
That is where my thoughts start, but that's not where they end.
I go to a different place with you when I close my eyes and let myself forget about everything else.
I think of escaping from all of this responsibility with you.
If you came to my room, would you wait for me to close the distance from my bed to where you are?
I would need the lights off to hide my fears and the trembling of my hands from you.
Only in my room's darkness would my desire for you drive me to be brave.
Against my wall, breathless and hungry for you, I would whisper, “Please don’t touch me yet,” and stop your hands with one of mine to take the lead.
This need would drive me to discover all the parts of you I have longed to see.
How would you feel against me while I draw tentative circles with the fingers of my other hand until I confidently find you?
Would your hands find their way free from my capture and take ownership of me?
That’s what I want.
That’s what I dream about.
But this is not what is.
How many more nights will I have to tell myself it is better to wait?
You have awakened something within me that I have tried to forget.
You have never touched me, but somehow, I know what you would feel like.
You have never spoken to me, but I already know what you sound like when you say my name.
I tell myself not to become attached to an outcome.
To trust that everything will happen as it should.
I know that this path is the right one, but how do I come to terms with feeling that it means I am moving further away from you?
I fear changing and one of us running because what we have to offer isn’t enough.
I fear not changing, and the impatience of lost time makes us lose all possibility.