Unlike Icarus, I’m Icarus

How do we know we have finally reached the depths of our own being without the need to burn our feathers and melt our wax away? How do we laugh after we fall knowing the risk of defiance is to lose the very sense of our pride?

It took me years to finally stand in the same shoes Icarus walked. In the same place with the same wish: I only ever wanted to reach the sun. To speak, to feel, and to embrace the heat of the highest peak. To live with the knowledge that I have reached the hottest star no one ever dared to make. To show the world that I too, am a work of art, and the very essence of my being is a star.

I once never understood the thrill of flying, the excitement freedom gives the moment you exceed the limits given, or the flow state where you start losing the balance between heaven and hell, and all that is left is the wanting to complete the puzzles that can only be filled when you sacrifice the tranquility of life.

When the universe finally aligns to hear my plea, the more greedy I become to find the meaning of the unconcealed truth. I soared through the curb of limitations, defeated the monsters residing in the bay, and explored the depths of the forest. But the more I experienced glory, the more wishes I dream to live… the more victory I aimed to acquire.

The world that was once at the brink of the mountain edge, was suddenly within arm’s reach. Hunger fueled dream, drunk within the whims of a never-ending separation of reality, passion-driven fantasy to be the star. A love so deep I could touch the constellation’s face.

When I thought nothing could ever come my way, not the airplanes that passed, neither the bird that flew, nor the wind that splashed around. And oh… the pain… the pain is blinding, the heat is excruciating, the sun is devastatingly agonizing. The heat throbs through the skin, and oh my feather, my wings, my own pride, my life, my moment, my dream, my beautiful beautiful quills.

It wasn’t a soft touch within the garden — it was a violent fall that erupted the core of my existence. How did Icarus laugh when he fell, when at the risk of his reign he lost his life?

And like Icarus, I drown in my own misery. But unlike him who smiled as he fell, I was weeping for the person I could have been. I was left with nothing but the dreams of my past that only now live as a ghost in the future. Oh the beauty of the present’s mesmerizing and tantalizing glimpse.

I killed my own light by trying to reach the star… to become the star. With my desperate cry, I cradled my own life under my soles. Where there is nothing more to dream, the light walked through within the small shift of dusk. But I wasn’t finished yet. This isn’t the kind of ending I want to complete.

Unlike Icarus who reached his dreams, I was still a far work of progress. Because unlike Icarus, I truly haven’t soared against heaven.

It was a slow and lasting moment of realization that rendered my thoughts. Icarus didn’t fail — he smiled as he drowned because he knew he reached the star… but at the moment of my falling, I wasn’t Icarus. I was my own person. And this ending is just another beginning. When I tried aiming for higher, it wasn’t the sun that defeated me, it was the dread that the star would consume me. The trepidation that I may lose what is there to keep.

This falling was a realization of something greater.

I wasn’t created to follow the paths of his soaring — I was born to exceed what was given. I wasn’t born to reach the stars… I was born to be the star that shone brightly through the dim-cornered wall where every dream aspires. If this pride that talks is the same gratification that led to Icarus’ misery, then maybe I am just the same as him. But I’ll become the greatest of them all.

And when I fall reaching my own being — then is it proven that to reach the peak of one’s own existence is to die. And when that time comes… I may have died, but the glory and league I left was what kept me going. My body may become dust, my soul may ascend, but my name will continue climbing with its pride ahead.

And like Icarus, I may have lost in the game, but I have won my goals. And maybe then, instead of dying, instead of drowning, I might be able to grow another wings.