Learning to Fly

by Jenny Morelli

Image credit: Kaustav Sarkar on Unsplash

You must fall before you can fly.

I was often overlooked and underseen as a child, but when I was seen, it was for all the wrong reasons. Like when my fourth-grade teacher wrote on my report card that I had a ‘defeatist attitude,’ I leaned into it, quitting every chance I got, every time things got too hard.

It became difficult for me to tell if no one liked me because I didn’t try to fit in, or if I didn’t fit in because no one liked me.

My childhood was filled with not trying, filled with climbing off the diving board instead of taking a leap of faith, with not swinging too high and losing control and falling fast before my shadow could catch up; my childhood was filled with failing because I never tried to fall so that I could learn to fly.

One thing I quit after high school was writing, even though I loved it, and my teachers praised me for my talent. I quit because I believed no one else would ever want to read my thoughts and beliefs and perceptions of life.

Decades passed before my fingers itched so much, I had to find a community to help push me to write again, and that’s when I found a local writing organization that held live classes in a small, quaint studio space. This gave me a reason to leave my house and bond with others like me who also had things to say, but doubted an audience would ever care, and soon, we all cared about each other, which perpetuated more writing, more thoughts, more ideas and beliefs, and my writing had meaning again.

Stories spilled from my mind onto the page, and things were good until a fellow workshopper said she wouldn’t let her daughter read my novel because of a single scene I wrote. I know she meant no harm, but still, that ever-looming beast called Defeatist Attitude reared its doubt-induced venom, smothering me again and spiraling back to a time when quitting was all I knew, when failing was worse than falling and flying was a distant dream meant for anyone but me.

This single comment meant for good and not harm set me back decades, but after a full week of never again, defeat has won, full-stop, quit with a capital Q. Then, my fingers began to itch again, an itch only pen and paper could scratch, and so I sat down and began a new story; wrote until I filled seventy-five pages and well on my way to a solid second novel, all because I refused to be thrown back to fourth grade, where that awful beast of self-doubt, of defeatist attitude, of failing to try for fear of falling before I could fly. And soon, I completed two whole novels with many more tales inside my chaotic mind just waiting to be told because falling doesn’t lead to failure.

Falling is just the necessary ‘fail’ one must endure before she can fly.

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Jenny Morelli

Jenny Morelli is a high school English teacher who lives in New Jersey with her husband and cat. She is often either inspired by her students or else they're triggering memories in her of when she was young and struggling with her self-confidence. She has been published in a number of literary magazines, including Spare Parts for a novel excerpt, Spillwords for several themed poems, and Bottlecap Press for her own chapbook This is Not a Drill.