THE SILENT REVIEW_WINTER EDITION 2021_WEB

GIVEN TO FLY
by Elisha Pritchard
There have been moments over the past 15 months where I’ve strongly doubted
whether or not a call would ever come. Moments where my innate pull to fly
felt like a substantial burden that if not suppressed, would regularly pull me under
while I struggled to adapt to a new life in retail. Therefore, when my phone rang
back in May, it couldn’t have come as a bigger shock; my voice echoing in my
ears as I clumsily searched for the words to express my deep-seated gratitude.
So, it surprised me that on hanging up the phone, fear and
doubt began to settle in immediately and I found myself
irrationally taking inventory of the ways in which I couldn’t
make it work. As I fought hard to catch the dislodged pieces
of my own sudden upheaval, I realised with jarring certainty
that I simply didn’t feel ready. Yet given the severity of the
year behind me, perhaps I never would be. After spending
a year building a life around the safety and predictability of
home, I wasn’t sure if I was emotionally ready to re-adjust
my internal axis so abruptly. In the same breath, it also
dawned on me that when my world shrank, my confidence
had too. That as my world became more insular, anxiety
started to curl itself around me like a thorny tendril and, as
time continued, it was becoming increasingly difficult to
break free.
‘How dramatically would things be different?‘
‘Could I successfully manage two jobs?’
‘After all this overarching mayhem, would I even
remember how to be ‘me’ again?’
To the caller on the other end of the line, it simply
wasn’t possible to convey how much my heart ached
to fly after a year of trying to convince myself that it
didn’t matter. A necessary act of self-preservation, born
from the wilful desire to protect my head from the
vulnerability of my heart.
These were the thoughts that kept me awake at night in
the days before my first flight to Perth. Fears which
had manifested themselves gradually, while I found myself
pre-occupied in the discovery of new meaning and
self-reinvention.
As it turns out, the answer to these questions never even
mattered. What mattered was my capacity to push through
the unknowns, ‘what-ifs’ and half-forgotten things, knowing
that my confidence was waiting to greet me on the other side.
12 WINTER EDITION 2021