TE Ballard describes her new, flinching ways so beautifully in this post.

I used to fly down the roads here, so secure in my undying. I didn’t think I was immortal. I didn’t think. I didn’t need to.

There’s a road just behind my house where the hills suspend you at the top, like a toy train pulling too much weight and getting caught by the balance. You are looking up the road, up the hillside, then at nothing but sky, and then it all falls and you can’t see the sky or anything but the road piercing the valley and rising up again on the other side. Again and again, drudgery, brief freedom, and then the rush with gravity latched to your wrist like a cinder-blocked handcuff.

I used to love that road. I loved the way my tires would tug free of the ground so briefly and then I’d bounce back to earth and build up speed for the next launch. Now, I just want to sit at the bottom. I want every driver to see me, you can’t avoid seeing me if I sit here, quietly. No soaring. My god, no flying. And no peekaboo with the sky. Now you see me. Now you don’t not see me.

I don’t have to take that road. There are ways around. But a part of me remembers liking the me who flew.