Maybe your Path is Harder Because Your Calling is Higher.

Some days, I wake up and the world feels too heavy. Like someone snuck in during the night and replaced all the air with lead.

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Breathing hurts. Moving hurts. Existing hurts.

Some days I’m scrambling up steep slopes, other days I’m lost in fog so thick I can’t see my own hands. It’s exhausting. It’s infuriating. It makes me want to scream at the sky and demand to know why.

I tell myself it’s okay. That this feeling will pass. Some days a voice in my head, whispers: “Maybe it’s supposed to be this hard.”

I think about the people who seem to float through life. Their laughter comes easy, their smiles seem so genuine. Do they know how lucky they are? Or is their happiness just as hard-won as my struggle, just hidden better?

Some nights, I lie awake, tracing the cracks in my ceiling. I wonder if they’re there to let the light in or to remind me that even the strongest things can break. Maybe both.

I remember all the times I’ve tried and failed. All the dreams that slipped through my fingers like sand. It would be so easy to give up, to settle for less. To clip my own wings and say, “This is enough.”

But then I think about the view from the top of that mountain I haven’t climbed yet. I think about the people I haven’t helped, the words I haven’t written, the life I haven’t lived. And something in me refuses to let go.

So I get up. I face another day. Because maybe, all this pain is sculpting me into something beautiful. Something necessary. Something that can soar higher than I ever imagined.

And on the days when I can’t believe in myself, I believe in that possibility. It’s not much, but it’s enough to take one more step. To try one more time. To keep reaching for that calling that feels just out of reach.

Because I guess, the struggle is what gives us our wings.

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✍ — Published by Dr. Preeti Singh at Dancing Elephants Press. Click here for submission guidelines.