Most precious Reader, have you ever been fighting against the very air you breathe, walking through water, running on wet sand, slicing the heads off an appalling hydra only to watch skin split from the red veins where blood once ran, stretching and rearing into an entirely new beast?
I have done so. And though I have not been afforded the fantastic honour of wrapping my limbs in metal and mounting a chestnut steed, I have known the feeling of gripping onto a phlegm-covered cave wall, of kicking upward in the wretched swirl of a whirlpool, of desperately trying to stem the flow of lifeforce from a ravenous creature, praying its body may accept my aid, and feel no inclination to strike once healed by my hand.
Not all battles are so painful, of course. Without an ogre to block the bridge, and conquer with witty turn-of-phrase, we would never grow in our character. For indeed, I have come to learn the ironic saying thrown about by many parents is quite true – that troubles do inspire an evolution of persona, that difficulties do invite an understanding one might never have otherwise reached.
Now, Reader, this is not to say that “pain is gain”. While there may be a greater world lying at the end of the brambled path, such an idiom seems to prompt one to believe that the only way to reach utopia is by swimming upstream of the River Styx. How very untrue. Each of us walks our own course, be it currently lined with briars or not, but to seek hardship for the sake of self-betterment may, in this humble writer’s opinion, border on ludicrosity.
Would it not be wonderful to live the words I write? Unfortunately, dear Reader, as was so poignantly coined by Miss Alice of Wonderland, “I give myself very good advice, but I very seldom follow it.” Just when I emerged from the exhausting fights of the past many months, dripping with sweat, armour again forged by the blood I had let, heart lightened by the heaviness I had come to know…I walked through the golden rays of a brilliant sun and sought uncertain skies.
But surely I am not so foolish as all that, I whisper as I write these words. Surely a girl who prides herself on her rapier mind would not venture to undertake such a herculean challenge, not without cause. Not without an invitation from the heavens, or her own beating heart.
Yes, Reader, I wonder how shining those skies truly were. I wonder if the battles I faced were meant to be just that – battles, with no peace to be found in their cessation save for a message from the divine that in weathering my trials, I had prepared myself for a fork in the road. It was time, I realised, to venture back into the thicket, and leave behind a path that seemed peaceful when captured in a Polaroid, but required one’s heaviest armor just to protect one’s skin from the violent air.
There are days, Reader, when I wonder if I am destined to a life of fighting. I have always fancied myself a lover, a hopeless romantic, a dreamer, a poet with tortured eyes that watch everything and miss nothing. But as I walk through each passing day, I wonder whether I carry less love and more fight in my chest.
And what of the great lovers of the fight? Those heroes we hold in our minds, consciously or not, as we spur on our mounts toward the setting sun? Juliet Capulet was a fighter, and her Romeo, a lover. They ran into the same fray, willingly, with a full understanding of what was to come, because Juliet refused to face a day without her heart’s desire, and Romeo did not know how to. Neither could live without the other, and thus neither lived.
Such a thought makes me question, dearest Reader, whether loving and fighting are truly the same thing. Is it not so, that those prickling feelings that settle in our chests are born of love? One does not feel great pain at the loss of something unloved, fear for the future of an extraneous being, hope for the prosperity of a paltry article. One does not take up one’s sword lest driven mad by love for that which hangs in the balance… and perhaps one may keep hold of that blade because they are learning to love and fight in a way that unites the two.
Reader, I do not wish upon you great suffering. In fact, I would wish upon you the lightest of loads, the prettiest of countries, the widest of smiles. But my wishes mean nothing. It is then my hope, most precious Reader, most loving fighter, that you might learn to fight with love, and love a fight, as I am currently fighting to learn to love. I have the utmost faith in your journey.
Love,
Lettie Anne