Follow the Gleam

Did you ever line up for that ride at the show? The one filled with the screaming adolescents. Bright, gaudy, absolutely terrifying. That sense of giddy anticipation and the bile rising in your throat as you watched it tumble and spin and furiously bargained in your head that you could back out if you really wanted to, could leave the line and no one would ever know or care? Felt that stubborn pull behind your breastbone giving you that sudden adrenaline boost and getting into the cage anyway?

That feeling of being harnessed into the ride and knowing that you can't get off now. That better or worse you're stuck and that you're just going to have to grit it out. You will live, you know that, but right about now you're wishing yourself anywhere but here. Here with heart beat pounding in heady, rapid swooshes in your ears, your hands gripped tightly to the bars because you both need to hang on and they're shaking so much that you need to do something with them?And then the ride begins. Your eyes are shut tight as you get flung around, gripping on tightly and so scared you wonder if you really can die of fright. And then you open your eyes...

You see the glittering lights whooshing in front of you, the ground swirling, and for a brief moment the fear reaches its peak. But then something changes, the fear and the anticipation gradually change and the experience becomes enthralling, exhilirating. Your heart is still beating a million miles an hour but it's excitement and awe and something intangible, that flash at immortal joie that makes life amazing.

The veil lifted for me this week. I realised how much of myself I had lost in my year at home, I realised how much of my spirit had been stifled. And while I regret none of it and love the Monkey more than life itself, I have come back to me. I am myself again. I want to be a surgeon. I can be whatever I want to be. I have the ability and the talent and the drive and the ambition. My girls will be proud of their mother and most of all I am proud of me.

I saw the Gleam this week. I saw it and I followed it and I danced in its light. I am chasing the Gleam.