GIVE ME BIGGER WHITE WINGS

12November2025
Dear Diary,

The room felt stifling, so I shuffled over to the window. The heat had begun to ease, and a faint breeze brushed the curtains.
Its probably just me feeling the stuffiness, I muttered to myself.

A tight knot in my throat stole my breath. That sensation was all too familiar not the first time. It no longer frightened me; it had settled into a grim cocktail of weakness, emptiness, and utter indifference. My legs gave way, and my mind dimmed as if someone had flicked a lone light switch in the dark.

I collapsed onto the bed and almost instantly slipped into sleep.

At first the dream was a jumble of disjointed voices, footsteps echoing up an unseen staircase, a lantern’s glow cutting through fog then the chaos cleared. I became a bird, sprouting enormous white wings, light and keen as a fresh inhale after a long silence. I rose above a city that shimmered below, quivering with countless lights like a scatter of tiny worlds.

The city was unknown, yet somehow felt like home. Towering shadows of buildings stretched upward, as if trying to touch the stars. Between them rose bridges and narrow alleyways, the very breath of freedom that cannot be described, only felt. It was effortless there. In that moment I remembered what I could be: unwearied, unburdened by anyones approval, uncompressed inside simply alive.

Free.

I swooped over that city, darted between rooftops, brushed the cool air with my feathers, and it seemed it would last forever. Then a tug pulled me down, like an invisible memory.

I need to lie down, a voicemy own, distantcalled out.

The world shivered. Light fractured.

I began to fall, gentle as a feather, back to the same stifling room where it all began.

My eyes snapped open as if someone had whispered my name. The room greeted me with the same air, now colder. Something within me had returned only partially; a fragment lingered in that illuminated city of shadows and wings.

I pushed myself up, sat on the edge of the bed. Silence hung heavylike a record stuck on a single note. The world around looked familiar yet foreign, as if the walls had shifted while I slept.

I ran a hand over my chest, to the spot where, in the dream, my wings had beat. My fingers met only the cotton of my shirt.

Strange I was almost flying, I thought. The memory of the dream was already melting, like wet snow on my palm. All that remained was a faint sensation of air stirring inside me, barely perceptible but undeniably real.

Then I realized: the dream wasnt about the flight itself.
It wasnt about a city whose name I couldnt utter.

It was about how tired I had become of living on earth, where each step feels like a debt.
It was about needing a different sky.
It was about wings being not a fantasy but a memoryancient, almost forgotten.

I held my breath, not to scare the feeling away, and whispered into the darkness:
If I ever dare Ill return there. Ill truly soar.

In the same breath a quiet voice inside answered:
Youve already started.

I lingered by the window far longer than usual, watching the night surrender its hold. Shadows thinned, the sky lightened, and it seemed the world took a deep breath before plunging back into its usual bustle.

Something inside me had shifted.
Quietly, subtly, but irrevocably.

I stared at the horizon, where a thin line of light split the world into before and after. In that instant I understood I was no longer afraidof my own frailties, of the vacuum within, of the weary indifference that often washed over me like a tide.

Those wings werent merely a dream.
They were part of me.

I closed my eyes slowly, laid my palm over my heart, feeling it thump faintly, confirming the thoughtsoftly, not loudly, but with certainty.

I whispered:
Enough of living for others expectations. Enough of enduring. Enough of waiting for permission to be myself.

And in that moment something unfurled inside me. Not wingsno. Something deeper. As if my soul, long crouched in darkness, finally rose to its full height.

I opened my eyes. The sky had turned a pale pink, and the first morning light brushed my face.

I stepped back from the window and felt the floor beneath my feet tremble. Or perhaps the world shivered. It mattered little. What mattered was that I no longer felt I was falling.

I drew a long, truly free breaththe first in months. I spoke aloud, clear and calm, as if taking an oath:
I will rise. On my own. To the heights my mind conjures.

No suffocating room will ever again be my cage.

I turned, my steps lightalmost airynot because I hurried, but because a man who has found his own wings never walks the same way again.

Lesson: Freedom begins the moment you stop waiting for permission and start trusting the wings you already carry.