I was just listening to a song by Marie Digby with that title, and I really liked her lyrics. The song is basically about new beginnings, and how certain chapters have to be closed before new ones can be written. Here’s a snippet of it:

It’s never quite simple, it’s never that safe
It never seems perfect until it’s too late
It’s never the right time to find a new way

There’s an answer in the sound of a train
There is wisdom past the bridge on the bay
There’s a lifetime through the fog and the rain
There’s a beauty in walking away

It definitely takes courage to walk away. To walk away from a job, from the norm, from friendships. But sometimes that is what we have to do to move on, and I think we all could benefit by doing a little more ‘walking away’ in our lives. And if your shoes weren’t made for walking, my suggestion is that you walk away from them and get a new pair.

Every time my eyes touch a great body of literary work, I catch a glimpse of the mountain’s summit, the mountain I am climbing.

For a moment, I will be lost in awe, consumed by its beauty. Until it sinks in. A realisation that I am nowhere close to where I need to be. That the journey forward will not be an easy one.

My heart, that just moments ago felt uplifted, light as a feather lost in a warm wind current, suddenly weighs as heavy as my snow boots. Everything feels heavy. My jacket, my gloves, my skin. With every step I take forward, the white powder beneath my feet crumbles and pulls me back half a stride. And the wind that was on my back, in my sails, have turned around to confront me. The peak that towers over me feels untouchable, unreachable and forever away. I avert my eyes back to the ground and concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other, knowing deep inside that each laboured step brings me closer to my prize, to my Everest.

Holding up an empty pack of sanitary pads she says, “Would you mind getting these for me?”

Regardless of how many times I’ve done it before, these words always jangle my bones.

Once at the store, I always seem to have to take a deep breath when I’m at the mouth of the feminine product aisle, right before I brave the lane of multicoloured packaging. Because you never ever see men in the aisle, I always get a feeling that I’m breaching a section of the store exlusive to women, like I’m a perv sneaking into the women’s restroom. I’ve always felt that to make the pad aisle less daunting, stores should encourage an intermingle of the sexes by throwing in some products that guys would buy as well. They could maybe zebra the items out in this fashion: pads, motor oil, tampons, WD40, panty liners, charcoal.

Because of the insane variety of female sanitary products out there, locating the right item is like trying to find an M&M in a silo of Skittles. And I always end up spending lots more time in pad alley than the women, who by instinct have the keen eye to just home in on what they are looking for and make off with it, almost like an eagle snatching fish out of the water.

Paying for the product is a whole other ordeal. As I wait at the cash register for my turn, I always feel that people are looking. That their eyes shift from the pads, and then on to me, to the pads, and back to me. And checkout always feels twice as long.

And nightmare of nightmares is when you return home and she tells you that you’ve got the wrong kind, and if you would be a darling and return to the store to swap it for the right one.