For him who flew the nest

picture source: https://za.pinterest.com/pin/375909900137897297/

You don’t know what it feels like to have a home, but know you cannot return…

It is easy to say something while you have it, you think differently when your base has been removed,

your choices are different, your thinking is different, you are different when coming from a point of security to that of uncertainty, the unknown.

This knowing you have what you have inherently gives you a confidence, an ability to take chances, the edge, bravado, to march forth unthinking,

knowing there is nothing to catch you when you fall, slices through the options before you and directs you onto a completely different path.

And that, that is something you only understand once it happens, once you live these moments.

And I cry for you for the time, the first time you will feel this, and I pray you’ll be strong enough to know what you need to do to prevent yourself from self-destructing.

You’ll be in a foreign land, without familiar places and familiar sound, watching the touches between people who’ve known each other for a long time, see the hugs and kisses passed between family members in greeting or in parting, the footsteps, see them walking towards a definitive destination, within known boundaries, familiar time spans, familiar rules.

You will long for your home ground, the streets you walked as a child, a growing adult, you will wish for the faces you passed daily, even the ones you chose to duck behind a hedge to avoid, you will long for the annoying demands of meeting timeframes you thought suffocating, the hugs you found smothering, the words you did not want to hear, the voices you did not want to hear, even the annoying bark of the dog next door and the ticking clock at midnight in the kitchen of the house you grew up in...

.....I pray for gentle waves while you learn the ways of the world out there.