Dedicated to my sister, my Heart, and published with her permission. 🙏💖🐇
That song, that f*$#ing song you sent me… Good god damn did it tear a hole inside me, one I’ve covered up with various things for years beyond counting. I’ve forgotten why I left or I never knew to begin with; I really can’t say. I just knew my heart couldn’t heal and my Soul couldn’t be at peace in that place. I wasn’t strong enough to stay, and I’ve never understood how you could. I’ve gone back and forth so many times in my mind, now knowing if I felt you were courageous or cowardly, lazy or tenacious. I’ve never really understood you, just accepted that you are you and I am me, and we’re both shockingly similar yet fundamentally different all at the same time. Our stories riddled with irony.
Why does this song cause me such a torrent of tears? A full-on ugly cry? Admittedly, the first verse alone made me stop it the first time I tried to listen, but recognising there was an critical lesson to learn from the writhing emotions leaving me extremely unsettled during my morning cardio and yoga routine, I came home resolved to listen to the whole thing… Sweet Jesus.
I feel my tears come from a rather bleak realisation, my first glimpse embarrassingly, into how you might be feeling… waiting for me to come home and wondering why I left; and you’re one of the three epic loves of my life to experience the jagged edges of my flighty Gypsy Spirit... I'm sure he felt that way too over the last year. Leaving the door open, willing to accommodate my particular needs and personality nuances, just to spend even a moment with me. My god, I’ve never seen it that way before, and to think I might have caused you that delicate mixture of hope and pain is ripping me apart from every angle of my being. After everything that happened to us the last thing you deserved was to be left by another person in your life… yet you let me go without so much as a word. Selflessly, you only ever wanted me to be happy. Sadly, I mistook it for apathy.
You are and have always been the one person, the one detail of my life, I never wanted to leave behind, but selfishly I knew I had to… I could never thrive there; I felt a compulsion to fly away in pursuit of god-knows-what. I wasn’t strong enough to stay. You were the one true sacrifice I made. I’ve always been thankful that you granted my freedom with such grace, because you’re the only living person that holds that level of power over me. The only person I unconditionally trust.
I left for so many reasons, some conscious, the vast majority either subconscious or down-right unconscious. Hopping around at first, not too far from the nest, until I felt the very soil under my feet burning me alive every time I thought I’d found a safe place to land. At first I assumed you understood but actually wanted me around without wanting to hold me back, over time I somehow deluded myself into thinking you were better off… if I was around all the time than I’d just annoy you until you didn’t want me around anymore anyway. I thought the trips every few years would sustain us… It wasn’t until you gifted me that song that I truly started to understand your perspective and perplexity.
🎵🔊“Don’t you find it strange that you just went ahead and carried on?”🎵🔊
I’ve asked you that question in various ways over the years, but I can’t say I’ve ever comprehended your answers which largely centered around your stubbornness. I always suspected you weren’t telling me how you really felt. And now I don’t honestly know who was strong, you for staying or me for leaving… The truth, of course, is that we both are in our own ways.
Where some develop roots, for many complicated reasons most of which are beyond my human comprehension, I grew wings; I cherish and value freedom and flight… And this is the price I’ve paid in pain up until now, it’s left me homeless without a genuine sense of belonging. Free to be anyone and live anywhere, I relive identity crisis after identity crisis, fumbling. The freedom I cling to has become a barrier as so many options lay in front of me that I am paralysed by choice, not to mention the familiar sense of not knowing what I ultimately want to do with my life. I do not now, nor have I ever, had a clear vision of what I wanted. I’ve been a blackbird lost in a storm, enjoying transient moments of calmness within the eye before recklessly throwing myself into the wall to face the next challenge head-on. I did it to survive, to fight, to feel strong… now my muscles are so heavy I grow tired easily, still with nowhere to roost that feels right.
Symbolically I’ve always known this… nearly a decade ago I had the scene inked into my skin. You perched blissfully on your comfy branch back at home, stable and stoic… me up and flying off… it never occurred to me you’d ever felt like I left you behind; miss me. How could I ever expect you to understand what I didn’t understand myself? And, for all my brainy intellect, I remain woefully ignorant despite what feels like five lifetimes of lessons and jarring human experiences crammed into less than half a typical lifespan. Ironically, you are as strong if not stronger than me through staying… But then we always shared our delight in irony.
I left to heal, I left to discover myself, I left to find happiness, to ‘feel out’ where the hell I belonged… What I’ve discovered leaves me as confused as ever. Here I sit a million miles away from where started, yet somehow right back where I began. Lost and confused, not knowing where my home is… Yes my mind, heart and Soul have changed in many ways, yet I’m living this strange exquisite Universal irony of losing her all over again, just in a different form… supporting another person with her name, feeling that familiar grief. Suddenly I get it, she used to call me her heart, drunkenly slurred but purely authentic, I was her heart… just as I’m realising that you are mine, and my home is where my heart can be found whenever I sense it's lost.
All that said, I honestly have no regrets. I’m grateful for each and every lesson this lifetime has afforded me, thankful for the resilience I’ve cultivated, and profoundly humbled by all the connections I’ve made across this Earth. More and more of late, however, I feel that true thriving is not somewhere I have to try and find, it’s following my moral compass and trusting the rest to fall into place no matter how terrifying or uncomfortable. That compass has been recalibrated many times as I evolve, reshaping the scars of my past into new mindsets and ways of being, informed equally by my rational mind, compassionate heart and my gypsy Spirit.
This song wholeheartedly touches me because in it I hear you calling me home, for the first time, and it's agonising. Though I’m finally strong enough and there is no one on this Earth I’d rather grow old with ... still I cannot go back. I may not know where I belong, I only know that it is not there. The pain my heart suffers as I listen to this song, as I think of you, is the price I pay for freedom; something my Spirit demands. But yes, my heart will always pull me towards my home, towards you... inspiring the internal friction and the next storm brews. Another opportunity to gauge my compass. 🧭🐇
Perhaps I don’t belong there because I belong everywhere else, to continue my adventures and worldly connections with as many other human Souls as possible. Regardless, thank you for sending me this song, thank you for helping me understand my own heart on a deeper level; most importantly, thank you for wholly accepting all that I am and all that I am not, sacrificing your sisterly love so I am free to fulfill my purpose.
Original Publication Date 12 May 2024
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