The Bluestone Review Spring 2022

broken with the sound of his warm voice. “One more time,” he said. He asked me to give this world another try, just one more time. That was all he asked of me before he left. This, now this, had quite the effect. It is now a little over a year later; I’m in a much brighter place, and the thank you rightfully belongs to him. Everytime I put myself down on anything big or small, I tell myself to try one more time. Every little occasion where I felt overly stressed or generally overwhelmed, “One more time,” I’d say. There will be, and there are times in my life where I’d wonder if trying ever really paid off for me to reach my goal in life. That goal is to live my life to the greatest extent imaginable, big or small. However, I can’t help but wonder if I already have because I’ve had plenty of accomplishments, at least to me. Whereas, I keep myself on the edge of my seat, forcing myself to just believe there is more out there for me to experience than to fantasize about leaving this humble abode. Before him, that’s all I could ever do, to think about letting all of this go. Now, after this effect, all I can do is to find myself fighting to keep holding onto this. Even if it takes a lifetime for me to find this purpose, an adventure, an epic journey like Beowulf stumbled upon, or the meaning to life Chris McCandless found in the wild. I need something that I can proudly call mine. Maybe it could be the path I’ll take to meet the career of my dreams, or maybe not. I’d like to think that’s where this leads me. My late boyfriend’s love and depar ture was the turning point I needed to see all of the brighter sites and possibilities in life, even if that’s all it’ll ever be, a possibility. Conversely, a wise young man taught me that I need to take leaps to know that there is a fall. It’s the trust in the fall that will allow me to feel as if I’m soaring through space, to allow the thrill of life vibrate through my bones, and to forget whatever is going on in my life and just fly. All it will take is one more time, one leap of faith. I need to remind myself of this feeling I crave time after time because that is the effect. The effect is the turning point one must take to fly, to conquer what I can now comfortably call home. Then, on one spectacular day, I will be able to say for the first time that there was an effect, and I did it. All it took was one more time.

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