songs tend to illicit thought.
whether it’s because it reminds you of an old memory, or it’s the song a long-time crush suggested you listen to (so you did, about fifty million times to see if there was a hidden message in there).
right now, the thing my mind trails to the most is a person. music was our thing with one another. i remembered listening to elton john and journey — my music taste was far beyond my years, i swear — and joking with this person. for the sake of this post… and probably posts to come as i work through my long abandoned feelings about the subject, we’re going to call him my peter pan. (This is completely and entirely influenced by kelsea ballerini’s peter pan)
i recently hopped on a plane to france for five months and then boarded about a million others while i was abroad so i could travel. knowing me before this experience, you’d know that i was absolutely terrified of flying. now, boarding a flight to san fransisco and back is no big deal.
i used to be afraid of flying, but i think a lot of that fear branched out from my peter pan.
i was on my flight home, staring at the expanding sunset on one side of the plane and the moon shining bright on the other and i realized then that i didn’t know when i started enjoying flying. maybe it was because i knew where i was going, that we were going to land in the prospective city we were traveling to and i had something to look ahead to.
i think what scared me before (aside from the terrifying heights, okay), was the fact that i always felt like i was flying away from something. i suppose that thought comes from the excuse that peter pan used to get away from me. he’s now a pilot and living out his dreams of flying, and told me he didn’t know where that would take him.
staring down at the tiny cities mapped out below me, i think i started to see the draw of flying. the distance feels like thousands of miles between you and the rest of the world. it felt like a safety net, of sorts, because when you’re flying solo on an airplane for hours, there’s no one there who can hurt you. i get it now, peter pan.
but i’m also starting to think that putting distance between oneself and others isn’t the answer. opening yourself up to hurt, much like i was very willing to do and did with my peter pan, makes a person more empathetic and inward looking.
how do i put distance between myself and those who care about me most? why?
(my best friends will answer this by saying something about me moving to california)
what is stopping me from being more open with those around me? fear of being hurt? fear of hurting others?
my peter pan flew away because he didn’t know how to answer these questions truthfully. there was a time that i would have believed him when he told me he didn’t want to hurt me. now, i think it’s because he knew i had actually had the capacity to hurt him. that’s what love does, right?
sitting around blaming myself for him leaving me hasn’t done much good. but i think it’s made me a better person. i recognize the times that i’ve hurt people in my past much more clearly now. i also know i deserved much better, and will wait for that day when better comes along.
i just have to be patient.