To Grow Wings
I’ve been thinking about how the soul must bleed from being asked to stay in a body that keeps breaking, in a world that keeps asking for more than it gives back.
Sometimes, I wonder if growing wings is just another way of saying, “I’ve carried enough, but I still believe there’s something gentler waiting on the other side of the sorrow.”
I mourn the person I used to be, but that version of me was never meant to last. She was only meant to teach me how to hold on long enough to understand letting go. No matter what I do, I can’t go back, only forward, even when forward feels like falling.
I think of all the versions of me trapped in different timelines, and I want to tell them all that it’s okay, that one day they’ll understand that this weight was never meant to be permanent and that they’ll wake up feeling lighter and realize their bones have turned into feathers.
Some days, I can almost feel the invisible things beneath my shoulder blades, aching to unfold. They don’t hurt exactly; they just remind me that change, even when it’s gentle, still asks for something to be shed.
I don’t think they’re wings yet, maybe just the promise of them. They’re just waiting for me to be brave enough to take off whatever is keeping me earthbound.
It’s strange how we cling so tightly to the very things that exhaust us, as if the act of holding on might convince the world we’re still whole.
What does it feel like to finally lift? To rise above the noise, the weight, and the ache of it all...
I imagine air instead of fear or sky instead of doubt. I imagine a version of myself that doesn’t flinch when the world grows peaceful, someone who can stand in stillness without feeling like she’s disappearing. Possibly that’s what wings do. They don’t just let you escape; they let you belong somewhere softer.
But freedom has its own kind of grief.
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To grow wings means leaving behind the ground that raised you, the faces that loved you, the hands that taught you how to stay, or even the memories that made you who you are. It’s releasing the weight of familiarity, even when it’s what anchored you through the storm.
It means accepting that flight is both beauty and surrender. You can’t hold on and fly at the same time because something has to be released. And that’s the hardest part of it all, realizing that to be free, you must let something die, even if it’s just the version of you that once believed you couldn’t.
To be free, I might have to let go of even the parts of me that loved the cage.
Still, I think about the day I’ll grow wings often. I don’t imagine it as an escape, but as a return to a feeling of peace, perhaps, or something close enough to it. Maybe I’ll find it in the wind that brushes past my face, in the morning light that slips through my window, or in the silence that no longer feels suffocating but like a haven.
One day, I’ll grow wings. And when I do, I think it’ll feel like breathing without effort, like being seen without needing to speak, like finally being weightless after a lifetime of trying to hold everything together.
I don’t know if the day my wings grow is the day I’ll leave or the day I’ll finally learn how to live. Perhaps it’s both.
Leaving isn’t always about absence after all, and living isn’t always about staying. It’s about learning how to carry the weight without letting it anchor you and how to breathe in a world that never stops asking you to hold your breath.
The sky never chooses between holding and releasing its clouds. Sometimes, the storm must happen before the clearing, and sometimes, the clearing is the storm. Freedom is not the absence of weight, but the gentleness of knowing you can bear it and still move.
Freedom and farewell are two sides of the same sky; one too bright to look at, the other too vast to hold. One burns, the other swallows. One asks you to let go; the other reminds you that you already have. They exist together, inseparable, like dusk and dawn; one arriving just as the other disappears.
Or freedom and farewell were never opposites at all. Maybe they’re just two names for the same peace, the kind that comes gently after the storm has spent itself.
But maybe to be free is to finally stop asking which side of the sky you’re on and to simply lift your face toward it, unafraid of whatever light or darkness it gives.
I know when the time comes, I’ll spread whatever I’ve grown, such as grief, love, or courage; and I’ll lift, not away or apart, but just beyond.
And if that’s what it means to grow wings, then perhaps that’s also what it means to be free.
