Pushing All I’ve Ever Known

“Fire vs Flame (inspired by Shafia)”

My journey is pushing all that I’ve ever known. As a 15 year old, I could not understand why God took away my track teammate. I could not understand why a storm that was going away from the meet, a lightning bolt still struck him and killed him.

Nothing anyone said made sense. Whether religious, non-religious, spiritual, non-spiritual. No one could answer my questions and it pissed me off. I couldn’t understand why people didn’t have the answers I was looking for. I couldn’t understand how we knew whether or not he was in heaven.

Him dying drew out this pain I couldn’t understand. A pain I hadn’t remembered feeling before. “What is this pain? Why do I feel like something has been taken from me?”

We weren’t even close friends. It was the fact in one moment I saw him, smiling like a happy camper only to be dead within seconds. Something in me broke and ever since then I’ve been dismantling all that I’ve ever known and been constructing something new.

It is part of my beautiful struggle. It is why I say I am not smart, but I am persistent. I won’t stop. I will keep pushing. I will keep questioning. I will keep pondering. I will keep searching, because it is what I do and I’ve decided to be true to do that.

I stress this is MY journey. In the UK, it’s called “believing in your wave” and I love it because it is the epitome of my struggle, the struggle of believing in my wave. The struggle in finding my way. The struggle in being comfortable with my story.

Adversity is one of my greatest teachers because it was in the struggle that I was born, thus it is in the struggle that I will “die”. It is my fate. It is my destiny. I can always choose to tap out. If I tap out, it will cost me. If I keep pushing, it will cost me. Though as life itself keeps happening beyond me, I decide to keep pushing.

My soul is in broken pieces scattered everywhere across the field, but I will keep looking for them. I will keep searching for them. I will keep putting them together, but I know I won’t be doing it alone. It is a journey that is individual and done together.

If you wish to share in my journey, fair enough. All I ask is you accept me for me and through it we will come out of it seeing the world in a way we never thought possible. Picking up each other’s broken pieces. Discovering new things. Tearing apart the shackles. Reigniting the flame and running into the fire. For it is not enough to be a stationary flame.

A fire is more dynamic and it roars with raw energy ; that’s where I am going. Reigniting my flame so I can run into the fire.

I have come this far and there is more to see and more to explore. I am excited to see what lays ahead, for I am entering into the final battle of my life: the mysterious battle of “Fire versus Flame”.

My story. My core. My all.