Taking Flight

Via text message this morning my intriguing sister asked me if I was already up because I had signed onto facebook at 9am. Yes, I was awake and actually by that time throwing my laundry in to be done. She told me that her and her daughter had just gone for a morning bike ride in a thunderstorm. I could instantly picture my niece half laughing and half crying, sometimes I think she gets confused on what emotion she feels and just does both. Which isn't that far off from what I do as well. I'm finding that more and more a lot of emotions are very closely related. I'm not talking love/hate, because that is so cliche and I don't feel that way. I can envision my sister telling G (my niece), that she needs to peddle and both of them going at top speed as the rain falls. My niece would be yelling for my sister to slow down and wait for her, but be trying her hardest to keep up.

My niece is 6, and it was about that time when I started biking with my father. Sometimes both of my sisters, my father and me would all go for long rides down the back dirt roads of the town I'm from. We would ride hours and every now and then we would be able to ride along some of the main "paved" roads. Most of the time my father would stop by a lake to look for fish, stop in the woods to look for deer prints, or to talk to someone we would run into. My father can talk to anyone about anything for hours. As a kid this is torture, as an adult when we go places it is still torture. I remember many nights riding the bikes around dusk, the wind in my face as we would try to speed down hills at top speed. Every now and then trying to extend my arms out to the side to feel what it might feel like to fly.

When I was a preteen I would spend 1 week a year at a church camp. I was a dorky kid and for the most part that week was spent being teased and made fun of for being different. My family didn't have a ton of money, so my clothing was never as new or brand name as the other kids, I didn't want to play sports, and I spent most of that week trying to be invisible. Out of the many weeks I spent at that camp I can really only think of two times that I actually had a good time. One of them being woken up in the middle of the night, and my cabin being taken outside to play games. One of the things we did was run across a field in the open cold night. I ran as if the world was falling apart at my feet, my hands flying out to my sides, my legs kicking so fast that I forgot I was moving at all. This is what flying was supposed to feel like. With my eyes closed I could see and feel my body lifting off the ground, I was rising above the trees that lined the field, my toes brushing past the tops of the leaves, I was above the world looking down. Eventually you have to open your eyes and the world collides with you again. The world will always collide with you again, it is unavoidable.

In an acting class I am currently taking we are learning about allowing your body to have full emotions and not cutting them off. We have learned that when you decide you only want to feel an emotion up to a 5 (for example, on a scale of 1-10), then you are not only cutting all that emotion off, but all of your emotions. You can't expect to only feel certain emotions to one degree and feel others higher. As an artist I love to feel things, even when they are shitty, because it makes me feel alive. I'm not saying that everything either needs to feel like a win or a lose, a birth or a death, but what's the point in stopping yourself from feeling anything?

In this life time I believe that I am here to have all my dreams come true, to fall in love and to learn to be happy. I am here to enjoy all the simple little moments and be content with the things I have.

I may never be able to run across a field with my arms out and lift off the ground, but I will fly.

"I want to be naked running through the streets
I want to invite this so called chaos that you'd think I dare not be
I want to be weightless flying through the air
I want to drop all these limitations at the shoes upon my feet"
-Alanis Morissette 'so-called chaos'