I Don't Have Wings... I Can Still Fly

  "I feel like I can fly."
                      -Speak pg 186
  How does it feel like... you know, to fly? Is it a good feeling or can words even describe that feeling? A lot of people say that when their dreams have finally been accomplished or when something really good happens but to be honest, I've never felt that way. I might've felt that way when I saw Justin Bieber at the Today Show but I don't know... I wasn't really flying. Not that I mean that literally. Does that make me a nonbeliever? I guess it's only because my young age hasn't seen, much less experienced enough. I don't think this has to do with time though. It only has to do with what has happened in my life so far.
  But thirteen years. It seems like a short time when you measure it in years but each significant moment stretches my life even further. Tears add an extra five years to my life and every smile adds a decade more to it. Though I would rather smile and laugh my butt off, I open my arms wide and welcome sadness and a waterfall of tears too. Tears help me grow up. It's as if pain has helped me understand more that anything can happen to anyone and that just because you're a good person doesn't mean all the things in the world are going to come your way. There's work that comes before success and there's that same amount of work the can also lead to failure. Life is just about learning, no matter how old you are.
   I didn't even realize I was growing until the ground seemed further apart from me as each year passed by. When I looked down all I saw was concrete. Sure it held me tight but I've never liked the concrete sidewalks because they're really rough. That's when I thought of Melinda Sordino.
  In Speak by Laurie Halse Anderson, Melinda Sordino was a girl who was only too young when she ended up calling the cops that summer night during the party because she had been raped. Upon entering high school, everyone she knew hated her... even people that didn't know her. It wasn't her fault. She didn't talk after that. It took her a whole school year for her to finally open up and realize that she wasn't alone. Her increase in confidence really began when she saw the note she wrote on her bathroom stall filled with comments. She had no voice but she began to recover it when she took the decision to write that name, Andy Evans, which started a whole conversation that led her to think, "I feel like I can fly." She had grown since that party where she was raped because she realized that what had happened to her was an event which proved to her that the younger and more innocent you are, life has a larger impact on you. If she didn't have people like Mr. Freeman, her art teacher, in her life, she wouldn't have been able to make it through and recover from that traumatizing moment that silenced her for a long time. She grew and got rid of her fear and shame. She went from having innocence to being a more experienced person.
   Melinda was never a bad person. What happened to her could happen to anybody. The lesson here is that being a good person doesn't guarantee you everything nice in life. What Melinda did was suffer and in the end she realized that the right thing to do was to tell someone she was raped because holding in those tears only made it worse.
  There are so many things I've come to learn as I've gotten older yet none of them have impacted my life as much as Melinda's experience. I want to fly. Melinda didn't have wings but she was able to fly. She knew what she had to do and after succeeding at something that was worth working hard for, she flew. She didn't fly away though, she used those wings to just escape her past. Her reason for flying was because she had matured faster than others due to what she had been through. Spreading wings is just a matter of feeling like you've actually accomplished something huge. It doesn't have to be bad it could be the best thing in your life that causes you to fly. What do I do when I have wings? You can fly wherever you want but having wings doesn't mean you're free. The wind in part controls the direction you fly in if you're weak enough to let it. Once you become accustomed to them you can choose where to go as long as you know where you're going and are able to control those wings yourself. I might not be able to see or feel them but when I need them, wings will be there to reach out and help me when I find it hard to escape or succeed on my own.