Every day that goes by and you give up something, it strips you of an identity. Ideally, you don’t even give them up; you adjust in order to be comfortable with the current situation in your life. Like that six-inch heel I used to love—oh, the beauty of that shoe. Black, classy, and elegant—how far I would walk in it and not feel a single discomfort.
That beautiful pair of wedges I had—those I wore in the village and could scale terrains with all the comfort in the world. A happy girl I was.
One sleeveless top I had that used to be light blue, I wore it so much that it faded. I was sad to let it go, but I was going to university and happy I was. So one day at the market I found another one.Same color, yet this one was an off-shoulder. Oh, the good old days when all I needed was my phone and my identity card.
The child of my mother was a happy girl. I still am, for the most of it.
Then life stripped me of all of that joy. First I kept getting sick, so I stopped wearing minimal clothing as I was always cold. That being sick made my traveling less fun as I was always going home to seek treatment. Women reproductive issues are a right if passage, yet mine gave me as many hospital visits as my practicals. They have gotten better over time, but that’s a story for another day.
Then I was going for ward rounds in the hospital almost every day, so I stopped wearing them heels as often.
A few years later, I had my daughter, so comfort shoes it was.
Time and again I gave up something so as to be comfortable in that moment. I gave them up so gradually I never really noticed.
Don’t get me wrong, some of the things I gave up, growth required me to.
Yet today I look back, knowing that life is a rollercoaster—the gift that never stops giving and the monster that never stops taking.
Today I can visualize a beautiful tomorrow. I can enjoy this moment knowing that I may have lost the battle but I won the war.
I won, and now I get to be excited about the smell of the soil as the raindrops hit the ground. To smile as water flows down the river and throw flowers in it.To watch them float away in circles and feel joy deep inside.
To watch my face brighten as I fantasize about what it would be like to love again. The joy and excitement of desiring more. Asking more from life without fearing the unknown.
And when I look at this pair of heels, I know for a fact what it means to dream, to live, and to grace my presence in this new chapter.
To be so many years wiser, to see better because tears washed my eyes clean. I know what it means to look in the mirror and say, :I lived through it and made it to this side.
So I raise my hands with a smile: to dreaming again, to desiring so much more, and to wearing my scars with pride. To being happy today, tomorrow, and every day.