Creative Writing: A Bird Growing Marigolds

The thing is I had no idea that I was at the end. You spend such a long time spiraling in and out of chaos that when it finally stops you can’t fully comprehend its absence. One day, the pain and suffering just seemed to fold in on itself until it died into a whisper that lingered beneath the vibrations of my existence. All I was left with was this cavity, this opening that was no longer filled with such heartache. As a child I remember driving to school and looking out the window to see clusters of birds circling around the edges of the sky. Their wings stretched so far and wide, and as I watched them my eyes glittered in awe and envy. I felt trapped, like a bird whose wings were clipped and then tossed into a golden cage. How could I be filled with so much anxiety despite achieving so much? I was a bird who couldn’t see her wings, who thought they had been painfully ripped apart for everyone else to chew on. All of this achievement felt like a facade, an illusion to keep my world intact, until one day the thread snapped and the cage had swung open. Anxiety summoned my body, and I was held captive. I spent nights holding onto my chest just to feel a heartbeat because I thought I was going to die. I would be walking in the hallways when suddenly I felt as if I couldn’t breathe. I didn’t understand what was happening to me, and so I stayed in the cage a little longer even though I could leave. It felt safer to be naïve than it did to face what I was going through. The darkness had consumed so much of my life that I felt like I had nothing to look forward to. After years of staying inside this golden cage, I remember feeling the weight of my emotions slowly melting off of me. At first it was gradual, I started feeling less afraid and I gained the courage to look at my pain right in the eye. As I’ve always said, pain is an unloved child scorned and abandoned by those too afraid to face it. I would still pass by the bundle of birds in the sky, but I felt so far away from them. I wondered what it felt like to fly, to feel the breath of freedom in my lungs. They seemed to circle around the clouds without a care in the world. It wasn’t until the other day as I was gardening in my backyard that I realized what it meant to feel like the birds. I had exchanged my golden cage for dirt and worms, the smell of the Earth pardoning me from my prison; it’s been years since my last panic attack. As I stood with both knees digging into the dirt, and both hands holding the roots of my marigold plant, I finally realized that I somehow made it to the end. I didn’t have to fly like the birds to feel free, all I had to do was walk. Let’s be real, I was never going to be a bird, but that was the point. I can’t be what I’m not, and there’s freedom in transforming into who you truly are. I don’t have to be this other thing to feel free, I just needed to start surrendering to me.

Written in August 2021.