The Taste of Wild Freedom

Photo: www.eyeem.com/josephgoh

All I've dreamed this entire year was to be in Chiang Mai this exact night to watch a hundred lanterns fly into the night sky. But I was in a meeting in the city instead. This is not in any way a complaint, though. I am grateful. I am. Just this year alone, this job has brought me to places and people and moments beyond I could have ever imagined.

The big plan was to finally embark on my own nomadic adventure this year that would eventually end at Yee Peng, but the universe clearly had other ideas. Although I am admittedly a little disappointed, I try to shake the bad feelings away by reminding myself that things only unfold as they should. That the universe is a cosmic flow. And I am water.

When I think about the chances—two flights to Thailand in just the past half a year I never got on and with another huge maybe waiting in the next month—it would seem that it just isn't the right time yet. For whatever reason that doesn't make sense yet, it seems Thailand is telling me to wait.

And so it is.

I must admit it has been cloudy lately, but I guess that's what happens when you try to tame a wild heart. I've been trying to keep myself focused on ~reality~ (which also explains my absence here), shutting out any calls from the wilderness, and desperately ignoring the familiar tug of restlessness constantly gnawing at my feet.

I needed the break. I needed to be pulled back to the ground. I needed to be reminded I don't only live for myself — these were the things I would tell myself, at least.

But this heart only knows the taste of wild freedom. That terrifying but electrifying pulsing on your fingertips as you stare into the unknown. When you know that, there, lying beyond everything you've ever feared is everything you have ever dreamed of. Any resistance seems futile. You know you will do it. You know it will happen. But not now. You do not know why. But not now. You are paralyzed and you do not know why.

And every waking day you delay, every sleepless night you think of all those things you've been craving to do, all the lives you have yet to live, all the false beliefs you have yet let go of, are aching stabs to the heart. When you feel you are too big, too full, too loud, too honest, too wild, too mad, too fucking magical, but here you are, stuffed so carelessly in a small, fractured, flawed, scarred, scared body that doesn't know how to contain you. 

So you are spilling. Spilling everywhere. Skin ripping, bursting at the seams, edges fraying, knees trembling, and aching. Aching everywhere.

Oh but darling, when will you let go? When will you accept that you are not like them? That you don't have to try to contain your madness? You are not just human. You are not just made of flesh. You and I are not made of logic and math and science. Not even history. Not even religion. 

When you put your hands together there is heat. You are energy. You touch the trees and you feel them breathing. The flowers sing to your ears. The wind whispers melodies. You bury your feet on the sand and you feel chemistry. Grass on your bare heels feels like electricity, and it fuels you. You inhale deeply and you know this world is alive and you are connected to everything. And you are. We are. You are me and I am you. You are the earth and the earth is you. You are all that surrounds you. You are no different to the sun and the dust and the lion and the bug. 

You are wildness and you are beauty. You are made of something else entirely. A whole universe on your own. Where skin is made of stardust, eyes are deep forests, hearts are vast oceans. Your mind is the galaxy. Your compassion is the whole world gently on its knees.

You are different. So different sometimes it may feel like you have no place here. But your place is everywhere you carry your beautiful, fragile heart.

Darling, do not let the world deny you of your madness and immensity. You are the Dog Woman in Winterson's dream, and the world will not always understand you. But you can. You do. You exist, and therefore you are.

Let go. Let yourself rip. Let it rip. And one day, someday soon, you will be. You will be back home. And you will, then again, what you've always, only wanted to be—

Free.