Re-healing & deciding which flight will have the right, next views
Waiting in another metaphorical airport for clarity and courage
The sky photographs clearer when you’re in it than when you observe it from below. When you’re flying above the clouds, you see the sky for what it fully is. No obstructed views or messy pasts blurring the clarity of the clouds.
Frankly, I don’t know how clear my photographs have been lately. I’ve done a lot of surviving and working. There have been many beautiful and joyful moments, yes. But there have been many more struggles capturing me. This past year has felt like a restart on the healing I had done over the past decade. My days are living for me. To-do lists and calendars drive weeks on my behalf. I find safety in being busy, which is a trend when my hurt is overwhelming.
All of my life, work has been my airport. The place I waited. Observed others. Saw the potential beyond a departure time, but never boarded. Kept claiming I missed my flight, I was at the wrong gate, or the plane was going to the wrong destination. My camera roll consisted of luggage loading the cargo hold, overpriced meals, and blue-sky clouds from behind the large windows. My potential was always visible to me, but I lacked the courage to take off.
There have been a few flights I got the nerve to board over the years. They’ve flown me to incredible and unexpected places, and I’m grateful. The photos were stunning and perspective-shifting.
Right now, though? Right now, I’m sitting in another airport. Something great is on the other side of each flight asking me to board it, but I’m lacking trust. Trust in the passenger assistants saying they’re ready for me. Trust in the departures list telling me the times and destinations. Trust in myself that I’m as capable of a navigator and traveler as I’ve believed in the past.
The thing that’s easy to forget is that I have never been let down by any of the flights I’ve let myself take a chance on. College was the right challenge for me. Moving to a state where I didn’t know anyone was the right challenge for me. Choosing the corporate, suburban, married life was the right challenge for me. Un-choosing the corporate, suburban, married life was also the right challenge for me. Going full time as a poet was the right challenge for me.
Re-healing is also the right challenge for me, and I need to trust the process. I will take a next flight in time. I will get to see above the clouds again. My life will be clearer to me again soon when I am courageous enough to board. Photographs will be unobstructed by the messy context of the past, and I will land somewhere unexpected and incredible.
And so will you, friend. We must keep going.
How Far I’ve Come was originally published in my collection, Far From Broken.
HOW FAR I'VE COME Some look at my life and say I know how to keep busy I look at my life and say I know how to keep from falling back to the depths of night skies that stole my desire for growth
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Might your recognition that flights and airports haven't failed you also expose another truth - you aren't afraid to fly and simply awaiting the right flight? Not every flight is going places worth going, even for a brief layover....