The metal cage at the Virginia Air & Space Museum was, as the name may suggest, a large metal cage. About two stories tall. I doubt very much that it was legally allowed to exist past 1999. But as a small ‘90s child, I stood in the metal cage, uncertain and confused, as employees slipped large, curved pieces of styrofoam onto each of my arms.
You could only enter the metal cage if you were beneath a certain weight and height. I stared out at my parents and my older brother, who gave small smiles and waves. The museum employees left the cage and locked the door behind them. And I stood there with my styrofoam arms held out, waiting for something to happen.
Beneath the floor, the giant blades of a giant fan began to whirl. Winds rose from below and started swirling around me, teasing the styrofoam wings and gently pulling up my arms. Until the rest of my body followed and my feet were a few inches above the ground. Then — it’s one of those memories so surreal that I’ve doubted its possibility — I saw the top of my father’s head. At first, it was glorious. I was flying! Growing taller, higher. Then I felt the air beneath me. I kicked my feet and there was nothing there. Nothing but air. And everyone on the ground was looking up at me, smiling and laughing. And I was flying and it was a miracle but my body began to tighten. The ground was so far away. My chest constricted and my throat was next. And I craved something solid beneath my feet and I think that may have been my first panic attack and I think I was laughing so the people on the ground wouldn’t know I was terrified.
A witchy lady once told me that fear is what emerges when we desire something deeply but we haven’t built up the capacity to receive it. Fritz Perls (founder of gestalt therapy) once called fear “excitement without the breath.” This sort of rhetoric emerges often when you look into the science or guidance on how to handle fear: just lean in.
These interpretations of fear encourage us to Brené Brown our way through it. There’s an utter Americanism to this: fear is something we must push through, some obstacle on the road to our inevitable success.
But what about fear that emerges after success? In “The Shock of Victory,” David Graeber wrote: “We are never prepared for victory. It throws us into confusion. We start fighting each other.” Sure, he was talking about politics but I think the same might be true of, well, everything.
Tangled together on the couch, B says he’s thinking of that Neutral Milk Hotel line. I don’t have to ask which one because I already know, but I ask anyway. And reality confirms my mind when he says, “How strange it is to be anything at all.”
We are never prepared for victory.
Lately, I’ve been googling shit like “how to tell if someone is genuinely kind” and “love bombing or just being nice” and “trauma boyfriend??????”
I once prided myself on my ability to read people—but these last few weeks, I’ve been doubting my reads. “Can someone really be this good?” I keep thinking. Which, if you read subtext, you’d translate as: someone this good couldn’t possibly like me. There must be something wrong.
And so I told B not to talk to me until I figured out my shit.
There’s this poem by Jack Gilbert that starts with the line:
“Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.”
It’s the only advice I’m willing to take and it’s not really advice at all. More of an observation.
At the base of every emotion now, there’s a note of grief. I know that next month, I could be sulking and licking my wounds — even, perhaps especially if, everybody involved is good.
Nothing makes me cry more than the moments when I feel the gaze of grace upon me. I think, if I was Icarus — up there so close to the sun — I’d get freaked out. I’d feel my feet kick at nothing but air and, knowing full well that the wax would melt, I’d soar even higher to speed up the fall.
Throughout my life, I’ve often been told who and how I am. It was so dark for so long—then the second I gave up the dream, it emerged. Although B tells me how I am, the proclamations don’t feel facade-deep. He not only sees me but keeps looking. Where others would be convinced that they understand, he knows—quietly and deeply—that there’s more. He tells me to take my time, we don’t need to talk every day if it scares me. That little bit of understanding makes me rush back to him and then he’s sending the menu for the weekend and I’m praying that the storm traps us inside together for days.
Perhaps Icarus just wasn’t prepared for victory.
About twelve years ago, when life was more potential than kinetic, I used to listen to that song by The Gossip on repeat. STANDING IN THE WAY OF CONTROL.
I never really knew what those six words meant. But I think I’ve learned or I think I’m learning.
I think Beth Ditto was singing about what happens when you—to some degree or another—throw everything in the air and maybe some pieces fly and others fall. Who’s to say? When you relinquish control, you receive something beyond your imagination.
Lately, it feels like I’ve strapped styrofoam wings to my arms and someone has turned on the floor fan. I can’t remember how to get down from this great height. Do I fly too close to the top of the metal cage? Does the fan in the floor turn off slowly, in spurts? Do I crash back down to the ground?
I recognize each moment as improbable now. It was stupid to let fear make me run. And as I’m curled against his chest, he’s thinking about how many things had to happen for us to be there: his chest against my curl. So now I’m thinking about it, too. Not just the improbabilities of our own small lives—the opportunities we didn’t chase though we never quite knew why, the canceled invitations, the gut-punch of intuition—but the improbable webs that made and surround us. Friends, parents, ephemeral lovers.
When I look into his face, his open face, I realize how closed I still am. “I thought I had already worked through all of my shit,” I tell him. How deeply I want to open for him. How badly I want to stop searching for the floor as I fly.
But I’m starting to believe there’s grace in surrender. I believe reality is more interesting than our imagined futures. I believe life can be good—but more than that, I believe that I can let it be good.
As a kid, my brother would stare up into the sky and name fighter jets as they flew overhead. Because of the military base a few dozen miles north, this was a fairly common occurrence. He’d hear the engines, then run outside shouting, “F-15! F-A18!”
Sure, fear might be excitement without the breath but I also found this quote from Chogyam Trungpa: “When there is no hope and fear, you have realized the goal.”
That one summer, our parents took us to the Virginia Air & Space Museum. It was supposed to be a trip for my brother. Every single aircraft sent him agog—but he was too big for the metal cage. I don’t know what his memories of that trip are. Perhaps they’ve faded. Perhaps he’s forgotten that he was too big for the metal cage. Everyone forgets that Icarus also flew.