Failure and falling

I tell myself I am not afraid to fall, yet my body betrays me.
I am paralyzed, while tiny 10 year olds bounce like popcorns around me.

I tell myself I am glad of this challenge— not only that!— I tell myself I knew it was going to be a challenge.
I KNEW it was going to be hard.
It was part of what called to me.

In my head, it is different. In my head the challenge doesn’t tangle itself in my past.
In my head, the challenge doesn’t make me feel Less Than. It makes me feel strong.
It makes me feel joy.

but

In the moment, in my heart, I am filled with the heavy despair of Failure.
My body will not launch itself into the unknown.
Worse. It will not launch itself into what it is certain is already known: continued Failure.
You’ve tried this, it says. Well, not this exactly, and sure, you were a different person made up of different cells, but WE KNOW it’s not going to go well.
Because challenges are hard, and you KNOW you’ve failed a lot. We don’t have to remind you.
BUT WE WILL.

No matter how much I’ve imagined doing this in my head in the skies of free delight, I am frozen by this inner beast echoing so loudly inside me.
I feel betrayed. But the worst is that I feel like I am betraying myself.
I have wanted to do this for longer than I can remember.

I have stopped myself for more years than I have fingers.
I thought I was ready.

I sob.
Never caring who sees me.

But that is not true either. And what am I doing but trying to illuminate truth?

What’s true is— when I cry, I feel distinctly seen.
Seen by the darkness that nods with solemn sureness as it pulls me down.
And I feel seen by some deeply glimpsed shard of me at my center, trying to shine out its lighthouse into my tempestuous seas.
A part of me that never wavers in its certainty that I am not the thoughts that throw me overboard to drown.
A part of me that knows that I am more— that I am energy itself and not the form.

A part of me that I feel I am letting down.

The feeling that, dwelled upon even for an instant
blacks out the light.

But when I can’t hold out for the lighthouse in my heart, a beacon shines out to me from the love that formed to speak to me.
A human being whose light shines with glaring brilliance and who will never stand to leave a ship at sea, no matter how hopeless.

I concentrate on this moment, beyond the doing, beyond swimming out of my thoughts. I concentrate on the love that begins to envelop me.

I still cry.

But I let the salt water wash through my body
knowing I will be retrieved by the light
on the shore.

in joy

Alexa