You live in a world where, if you meet the right person, you can fly.
Your parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles, even your older cousins, fly. Your first favourite songs were about two people flying together for the first time. The bedtime stories you read and animated movies you watched were all about learning to fly with that special person that seemed made for them.
You learn that flying is the ultimate happiness. You can follow the sun across the sky, watch thunderstorms from below, and see snowflakes form. There is nothing like it in the world, and everyone can do it.
You’re older now. You think you’ve met the right person, and you’re over the moon. This is what you’ve been waiting for. You’re ready to fly.
And you don’t. Moreover, you can’t. As the other person sprouts wings and begins to fly, holding onto you, you feel them pull you up from the ground and you get scared. Your stomach flips and you let go, dropping to the ground. It wasn’t supposed to feel like this. They return, confused and upset, and you know they’ll never want to be around you again.
You panic. Surely you can fly. Of course you can. There have been people that haven’t flown, or chose not to. But they’re not liked for this. It’s thought of as a weird quirk of theirs at best, and snobbish attitude at worst. Who would want to be on the ground?
But there has to be someone, anyone, like you. That couldn’t fly, no matter who they were with. Maybe there were one or two across history, but they aren’t known for that. Or it’s assumed they flew in secret.
You’re older now. A new tv show makes you feel hopeful. The main character can’t fly, and feels left out. All their friends fly, and try to help them find someone to fly with. And just when it seems like the big reveal is coming: they can’t fly! They’re just like you! It turns out.. they just prefer to fly with some other kind of person. And they fly. Their life is fixed. They’re happier than they’ve ever been. They have been saved from a miserable life on the ground.
Flying is all you can see now. The flying games. The tv shows that take place in the air. Floating restaurants. It’s everywhere. Did you know that, if you can fly, you can get tax benefits? Of course you can. It makes sense in a world where everyone can fly.
No one you talk to seems to get it. Your friends are all a little frustrated with you. Are you even trying? They don’t know that you once forced yourself to let a partner carry you up higher and higher until you couldn’t take it anymore, and told them to let you down again. That angered them. You weren’t flying on purpose, in their eyes. What kind of heartless partner won’t even fly? They drop you, and the long fall hurts. No, you never told your friends that. You know they’d think you deserved it.
You’re even older. You were supposed to pass flying milestones years ago. It’s whispered about, behind your back. What life is there for someone who can’t fly? What you want to tell them, what you want to scream from the rooftops so that the couples above can hear you, is that you’ve swam in the deepest oceans. You’ve trekked the wildest forests. You’ve walked along beaches and over mountains and through fields and you know, you know, there’s so much more to life than flying.
But in a world where everyone can fly, everyone wants to fly. They expect to fly, and they will. Life is equated to flying. Happiness is flying. It is the universal experience- who are you, if not a flyer? Your forests and oceans are fun, maybe a little juvenile, but nowhere near as important as flying.
You know that, having been told again and again that you don’t belong. When two characters don’t fly, you celebrate it in quiet, while everyone else is raging, because you pretend they’re like you. When you suggest a day to celebrate those who can’t fly, or try to speak up on non-flying issues, you’re ridiculed and berated. The words you use to describe yourself are used as jokes. No one cares that you can’t fly. You’re not special. You’re not cool.
You live in a world where, if you meet the right person, you can fly. But there is no right person. There is nothing in the sky that you desire. If that is your fate, so be it. Let them pity you, let them roll their eyes. You have the forest and the ocean and the whole earth. You will not be miserable because you’re told you should be. Looking back, were you ever truly suffering? The pebbles under your shoes, the tide running through your fingers, the scent of flowers. You do not need to fly. You never did.
You live in your world. And it is beautiful.
I was moved to write a metaphor for my experience as an alloaro person and the feelings of the aspec community at large. Sorry it’s long but it tells our story. We have never needed to fly. 💚
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