There are dreams we begin dreaming as children, yet only come to live once we are grown.
Because in childhood, dreaming is free, but making those dreams real requires permission.
My dream was the wind.
To grip the handlebars of a bicycle and glide down the street, letting my hair fly loose behind me… But for a long time, the wind was forbidden to me. Not because it was dangerous, but because the things forbidden to girls rarely are. They are simply deemed improper.
People believed the noise of the street, the dust of play, and the wild laughter of freedom were too much for girls to bear. So I watched the world from behind glass. The children running outside, scraped knees rising after each fall, trousers stained with dirt and summer… They were far from me, yet close enough to leave an ache inside my chest.
I tried to become lovable by becoming acceptable.
Strong. Quiet. Enduring.
Because love was rarely offered to the fragile, only to the useful, or to boys. So I worked hard to become useful. Stronger. Quieter. Harder to break. I believed that if I could be of use, I might finally deserve to be loved.
I hid my softness. I learned not to cry, not to show when I was tired. I learned to abandon pieces of myself in the hope that love might one day choose me, too. I stopped being myself; I became someone reshaped by the hunger to be loved.
And I wore myself thin.
Far too young, I learned what it meant to grow up before my time. I mistook the loss of my childhood for maturity.
Then one day, I truly grew older. And growing older is not always about age; sometimes it is the long journey back to yourself. It is uncovering, one by one, everything inside you that was silenced.
So I began reclaiming what I had left behind.
I learned to ride a bicycle. I learned by falling, by bruising, by trying again. I felt the wind at last. And more importantly, I learned not to fear wanting things.
Without asking anyone.
Without waiting for permission.
Written by
A word traveler trying to understand the world a little more in every post.
Now I understand this: freedom sometimes arrives late, but when it does, it stays. What is denied to us in childhood becomes infinitely more precious in adulthood, because by then, you are no longer carrying someone else’s expectations, only the responsibility of your own life.
And now, I am not merely strong; I am happy.
I can run. I can choose. I can walk away. I can desire.
And most importantly…
I no longer have to suppress my womanhood in order to love myself. Nor do I have to carry an identity that was never mine, simply to be loved more easily.
I live now without having to answer to anyone. Wherever my wind wishes to blow, I follow.
Because a girl who has finally come to know the wind no longer tries to stand against it, she learns to travel with it.