I took a long walk a couple of days ago. I’d been contemplating working on my ability to capture the beauty of nature, the way that I see it, and with the way my week had gone… I said screw it!
I knew that beside this walking trail was a graveyard and I felt like I needed to be somewhere that would force me to think very hard about life. My life.
There were hundreds of gravestones, if not thousands, and beneath them all lay the remains of people. People… just like me. They breathed the same air that I breathe now, they had thoughts, relatives, pet peeves… And now they’ve been reduced to soil. They’re recognized by a gravestone. And some day, that will be me. A gravestone with flowers on it. Not a woman with friends or enemies, not the research scientist, not the woman within a certain pay grade or holding a certain degree. And what will matter then?
Why do I worry so much and allow fear to control my decision making? Why do I care so much about what people think? If I have a passion, why don’t I just go after it? Why do I allow society’s “expectations” rule my life? I don’t even really like “society”!
By this point, my legs were beginning to cramp a little and hurt from walking for so long. I’d never spent this much time alone with God before and I felt like the dark cloud that was above me had been removed. As if I could suddenly breathe again. And then I saw something. Pretty yellow flowers, my favorite color flowers, were growing-wrapped around barbed-wire.
As hostile and (still) dangerous barbed-wire is, the flowers still grew. Because that’s what beautiful flowers do, right? They continue to grow and bloom. They didn’t even droop or grow a less vibrant yellow color. And they didn’t grow around the barbed-wire to avoid it. How is it that a flower can do everything that I feel that I can not? How is a flower more brave and bold than me? And how can I become more brave and bolder?
Paranoia and fear has a death grip on me and if I don’t get out of it soon… it’ll lead me to my end
I’m taking my life back.
