i clipped my wings for you

journal entry 9.29.25

I hate to say it. I hate to even think it because thoughts become words become reality. I hate to say things that hurt the people I love or once loved, and you fall into both categories, and this would hurt you. But it’s true. So I’ll say it to myself, here, where no one has to see. And no one will get hurt.

R——, you were holding me back. I could never live my life as fully as I desired, not my writing, not my music, nor my sport, nor my work, you kept me from my passions with your incessant pleas for time and attention and affection.

You kept me from becoming more than I was, perhaps, in part, because you knew if I flew too high I would spot lush green fields and soft, running streams of water, I would stop for a sip and become entranced by a field of flowers, their shapes and colors and aromas, the flowers in the field where I’d land, and I would fall under their spell and fall asleep, and when I woke, it would be dark and I would choose to spend the night.

“I’ll fly back to R—— in the morning,” I’d think. But in the morning the light of the sun would glance off forests and mountains in the distance, and the flowers would whisper of deserts and oceans, and I would take just a peek! over the horizon and catch sight of beauties indescribable, they would suck me in and absorb me, and quickly, all too quickly, I would forget I had a sunflower at home, a bright, cheerful, lonely little thing, abandoned forever.

That’s what you thought would happen if I flew. So I clipped my wings for you.

Klimt, 1907