Some days I fall. I’m not a good mum. I’m not a good human. I’m not a good me, on those days I fall.
It’s not a consolation to know that I do not fall alone. That humanity itself is in constant fluctuation, that some days we rise and some days we fall. I’ve fallen. Me. The writer of these words, the feeler of these aches. On those days I wish for more, I also wish for peace. The two do not go hand in hand.
But it’s not as easy as finding peace and being happy with that. Without this beautiful depth—without this wild and wistful wind that moves me—there would be no passion to whoosh me along the creative river of life, the river I know and love so well.
Is it about lowering the expectations I have of myself? Or is it about lowering my expectations of life? What, I wonder, would help me to feel at peace in a world that so often clips my wings.
I was given wings to fly.
I long to use them.
Is this me, using them? Right in this moment, is this the way I was meant to fly? To write about love and loss and sorrow and sacrifice? About life at its best and life at its worst and how, at some level, it’s all the same thing, anyway?