PhZzz...

"Take what you have learned, 

and move on."

-- Neil Gaiman, The Sandman: The Dream Hunters

Self portrait 11-3-13

I announced in yesterday's post that I finally graduated from sleep school!

I thought I'd commemorate the big event with an official graduation photo.

I guess you could say I graduated slumber cum laude.

I got all Zs.

I was the valedict-snore-ian.

I earned my PhZ.

Now, if I could only find my dream job.

Back to basics

"You uncover what is when you get rid of what isn't."

-- R. Buckminster Fuller

Self portrait 11-2-13

"We have the choice of two identities:

the external mask which seems to be real ...

and the hidden, inner person who seems to us to be nothing ..."

-- Thomas Merton, New Seeds of Contemplation

"There is but one cause of human failure.

And that is man's lack of faith in his true self."

-- William James

After a month of hiding behind disguises (which was a ton of fun), making today's face felt refreshingly simple and straightforward.

And a little weird.

At first I felt a little bit guilty ... like, "Is it OK for it to be just me?"

And then I let go and relaxed into it, and I found out that the answer is indeed "Yes. It is perfectly OK for it to be just me."

Maybe it's more accurate to say I rediscovered that yes, it's OK for it to be just me.

Because I'd totally lost touch with myself and it was nice to look back into nothing but my own face and say "Hey, you. I thought you'd never come back. Welcome home."

Sometimes you have to scrape off the paint and get down to the bare canvas -- get back to basics.

For me, this feeling goes a whole lot deeper than just self-portraits.

Over the past year, I definitely lost touch with myself. I was stumbling blind in a fog of insomnia, fatigue, depression, anxiety ... pick your poison.

But thanks to some really amazing people who had faith in me -- and thanks my own hard work, motivation, commitment and faith in myself -- the fog lifted and I found my way back.

The best news is that I finally graduated from sleep school!

This is huge. 

After three months of weekly drives (90 minutes each way) to a sleep disorders center, after working with a sleep psychologist on restructuring my sleep, and a psychiatrist/sleep specialist on sorting out my biochemistry, after keeping meticulous sleep diaries of all my sleeping and waking moments throughout every single night, after re-teaching my brain how to get sleepy at night instead of ramped up and anxious, after getting used to the taste of decaf ... 

Well, what it all means is that I can sleep again. Like real people. All by myself. Regularly. From midnight to 7 a.m. Every night (Unless I stupidly break the rules that I know are there to keep me on the rails.) And if I do go off the rails, I have been given the tools, the strategy, the way to get myself back on track.

Which means I don't feel helpless anymore.

Which means I don't feel hopeless anymore.

Which means I feel more like my true self than I've felt in a really long time.

And that's a huge relief. Because honestly?  It got pretty fucking scary and I seriously started doubting whether I'd never make it back.

But I did.

I made it.

Here I am.

"Hey, you."

She didn't bat an eye

"Around us the night creatures have their say. 

We are surrounded by a symphony."

-- Libby  Bray, The Sweet Far Thing

Self portrait 9-3-13

"The streetlight outside my house shines on tonight 

and I'm watching it like it could give me a vision ... 

make me bright and beautiful

so all the moths and bats would circle me 

like I was the center of the world and held secrets."

-- Sherman Alexie,  

The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

"The baby bat

Screamed out in fright,

Turn on the dark,

I'm afraid of the light."

-- Shel Silverstein

My sleep doctor gave me a prescription.

It's not a pill.

It's rules.

It's a sleep prescription.

She said that for the next several weeks, I have to take sleep like it's medication ... at specific times and specific doses. 

She didn't bat an eye as she told me I am not allowed to go anywhere near bed until 3 a.m., and that even if I don't fall asleep until 7 or even 7:30, I still have to get up at 8.

If it works and I start sleeping solidly between 3 and 8 a.m., my "dose" gets titrated up. The plan is to increase my allowed amount sleep weekly until I am ultimately sleeping a healthy number of regular hours.

Hopefully.

It's part of my insomnia "cure." It's a process called sleep restructuring, and I really hope it works. 

Like many prescriptions, there are side effects. For instance:

• You may watch endless back to back to back to back episodes of Miami Ink, because you've already watched every episode of L.A. Ink and New York Ink.
• You may stand on the patio in boxer shorts in the rain at 1 a.m. and take pictures of the sky.
• You may drink a bottle of O'Doul's at 2 a.m., even though you think O'Doul's tastes like dirty dishwater, but you are supposed to avoid alcohol near bedtime but the guys on Miami Ink are drinking beer and a cold one sounds really fucking good right now. 

Staying up until 3 a.m. isn't easy. I kind of run out of stuff to do. If I try to read, I doze off. And that's a no-no. I'm not supposed to do anything "stimulating." I'm supposed to do intentionally boring shit. Hence, the Miami Ink.

So for most of those long, night hours, I just "am."
I hang out.
I exist.
I wait.
I'm a lonesome night creature watching the slow crawl of time until my next meager fix.

Prescription strength

"Everything struggles to live.

Look at that tree growing up there out of that grating.

It gets no sun, and water only when it rains. 

It's growing out of sour earth.

And it's strong because its hard struggle to live

is making it strong."

-- Betty Smith, A Tree Grown in Brooklyn

Self portrait 8-30-13

"Existence never was originally meant to be 

that useless, blank, pale, slow-trailing thing 

it often becomes."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Shirley

"You'll be all right. You're strong. 

I know you'll be okay because I like you 

and you can't like someone who doesn't like themself. 

The people I fear for are the ones who I don't like 

because they hate themselves so much they won't let 

anyone else like them either. 

But I do like you. I'll miss you. 

And I know you'll be okay."  

-- Sarah Kane, 4.48 Psychosis

Sticking to it

"Another behavior that responds well to a sticker chart is sleeping independently. 

If the child stays in his own bed all night he can earn a sticker in the morning."

--Amy Morin, 

"Sticker Charts: Motivate your Preschooler with a Reward System"

Self portrait 8-21-13

"Sometimes we take action, sometimes we take pills."

-- Fall Out Boy

"I don't need a life that's normal

That's way too far away

But something next to normal

would be okay

Yeah, something next to normal

That's the thing I'd like to try

Close enough to normal

To get by."

-- Alice Ripley, 

"Maybe/Next to Normal," Next to Normal

Hanging in there.

Doing what I have to do to get my F'd up sleep re-ordered.

Following the rules, mostly.

Taking the meds, daily.

Sleeping better, sometimes.

Keeping positive, for the most part.

Little victories, incremental progress, baby steps.

Life's a blur

"Perpetual motion the image won't focus
A blur is all that's seen
But here in this moment like the eye of the storm
It all came clear to me."

-- Rise Against, "Ready to Fall" 

Self portrait 8-17-13

 “I toss and turn so much in my sleep 

that the very act of sleeping must be exhausting for me. 

Sleeping makes me want to sleep even more.
” 

-- Jarod Kintz, So many chairs, and no time to sit

“As long as I stared at the clock, at least the world remained in motion. 

Not a very consequential world, but in motion nonetheless. 

And as long as I knew the world was still in motion, I knew I existed. 

Not a very consequential existence, but an existence nonetheless. 

It struck me as wanting that someone should confirm his own existence 

only by the hands of an electric wall clock. 

There had to be a more cognitive means of confirmation. 

But try as I might, nothing less facile came to mind.”

-- Haruki Murakami, A Wild Sheep Chase

Let's pretend

"Let's pretend for just one moment that could actually happen.

You close your eyes and I'll close mine

and let's dream the same dream ..."

-- Annabel Pitcher, Ketchup Clouds

Self portrait 8-10-13

"Pretending to feel something you don't

can often lead you to the real thing, 

in some form."

-- Stacey Kade, The Rules

"Not like this. 

He wanted it to be real."

-- Suzanne Collins, Catching Fire

Rest less night

"I could not help it:

the restlessness was in my nature;

it agitated me to pain sometimes."

-- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre

Sticky gumball machine eyes 8-7-13

"I'd woken up early, and I took a long time getting ready to exist."

-- Fernando Pessoa, The Book of Disquiet 

Sticky gumball machine eyes (2) 8-7-13

"I've been put down, pushed around, apprehended and led downtown.
An' I can't help it if I'm out of sight,
'Cause I'm restless tonight."

-- Alison Krauss, "Restless"

Never never never give up

"... it wasn't that things were harder than you thought they were going to be,

it was that they were hard in ways that you didn't expect."

-- Lev Grossman, The Magician King

Self portrait 8-2-13

"She had changed in ways she would never have been able to anticipate.

She had become the kind of person who was barely able to get out of bed

in the morning without buckling beneath the tidal pull of the planets."

--  Kevin Brockmeier, The View from the Seventh Layer

"Perseverance is the hard work you do 

after you get tired of doing the hard work you already did."

-- Newt Gingrich

My mom has a refrigerator magnet with a famous quote from Winston Churchill.  

It says "Never never never give up."

It's a lovely thought. Nice advice. I'm sure it works for some people.

It's a good mantra for those persevering types -- the scrappy ones, the fighters, the tough guys, the folks with lots of tenacity and chutzpah -- folks like my mom, who has been through some pretty tough life, but who keeps bouncing back. You can knock her down, but she won't stay there. 

I have inherited a lot of traits from my mother -- good ones and other ones -- but I feel like I lack her fighting spirit. 

I mean, I'm fighting. I've fought. But lately, it seems like I'm just taking ineffective, lazy, punch-drunk swings at an opponent who is bobbing and weaving and pummeling the shit out of me round after round, throwing punches I never see coming.

I'm sure it's the fatigue talking, but after being awake for 42 hours straight, giving up sounds like a good option. 

Laying down on the mat for a good long 10-count sounds blissful.

Ding the bell.

Throw in the towel.

I can't take another round.

When I get like this, when my knees are buckling and the world feels like it's tipping, I'm glad I have people in my corner who are helping to prop me up.

I have two sleep specialists -- a psychologist who is handling my sleep counseling, and a psychiatrist/sleep medicine physician who is helping sort out my biochemistry to get to the root of my insomnia.

They are asking me questions, looking hard at my sleep behaviors, poking around in my brain to help me figure out and fix whatever has gone so impossibly haywire.

There are other people, too.

My husband and my sons have shown me unbelievable patience and kindness. Trust me, they have more of a right than anybody to launch an uppercut at my chin, but they don't.  They are sensitive about when I need some space, and when I need a good laugh, and when I don't know what I need at all. If I am too tired to participate, they understand. Or at least they pretend to, anyway.

I have a couple of friends who check in periodically and ask -- really ask -- how it's going. They tolerate my long silences and absences without making me feel like I'm the shittiest friend on the planet.

I have a sister who remembers stuff -- like that I was going for my first sleep evaluation appointment -- and texted me to say good luck.

I have an acupuncturist who can work miracles.

I have a massage therapist who knows, without me saying a word, exactly what I need.

I have "M," my secret weapon.

And I have my faces. 

The funny thing about a 365-days project is that it trundles along no matter how I feel. It doesn't care if I slept or not, or have pain or not. It's just exists, a day at a time.

And there's still lots of time to go. 

It's only August, and there are five full months remaining in this year. 

If filling those five months with a face a day helps get me through the hardest parts of re-claiming healthy sleep, then I'll lean into it as hard as I can and hope it holds me up.

I can't give up on this project.
I won't give up on this project.

Never, never, never. 

Maybe I am a little bit of a fighter after all.

I got it from my mama.

Buzzed

"Should I kill myself, or have a cup of coffee?"

-- Albert Camus

Face composed from rubber donkey teeth, alien eyes and a mustache 7-31-13

"She didn't know what Liam made his coffee with,

but it had to be magical sparkles and crack beans,

because it was the most delicious stuff she'd ever tasted."

-- Rachel Caine, Two Week's Notice

"I'd rather take coffee than compliments just now."

-- Louisa May Alcott, Little Women

I love coffee.

Strong, black, clean, unadulterated by milk or sugar.

I like coffee that has body, texture.

If I could, I would drink cups and cups of it all the live long day.

But I can't.

Due to a handful of health "conditions," (including insomnia and anxiety) I have become one of those unbearable middle aged people who has to carefully limit their caffeine intake. So I allow myself a single cup of coffee in the morning. Sometimes I sneak a second cup, and almost always regret it. Realistically, I'd probably be a lot better off without even drinking the first cup. 

But Jesus. 

I'm battling chronic insomnia. 

Something's got to give. 

To save me from myself chugging a whole pot of temptation, I rely on one of those one-cup brewers that uses the little hermetically-sealed, single-serve plastic pods. 

It makes passable coffee. 

It's drinkable. Just. 

No body. 

No texture.

Just coffee.

On weekends, if my husband brews a pot of "real" coffee, I drink a little demitasse-full.

His coffee is so, so very delicious. 

I savor it. 

I appreciate it. 

I wish for more. 

I try not to give in.

I drove past two Starbucks on my way home from the insomnia clinic yesterday. 

I really, really wanted to stop. 

I got up super early that morning to get to my appointment on time, and I felt like I deserved a little reward for the ride. 

Just a little treat. 

But the list of sleep rules and guidelines laying on the passenger seat was giving me a definite "look." I think it might have even rolled its eyes and made that exasperated sound.

I kept driving.

And don't say, "Why don't you just drink decaf?"

I loathe decaf.

I'd rather drink ink.

Sometimes I get resentful and angry about not being able to enjoy something as seemingly innocent and harmless as a second, or third, cup of coffee.  And if you've been visiting the blog for long, you know what I do when I get resentful or angry or whatever about anything. 

I make a face. 

For obvious reasons, I named this one "Buzz."

Laid to rest

"Wanderers eastward, wanderers west,

Know you why you cannot rest?

'Tis that every mother's son

Travails with a skeleton."

-- A.E. Housman, A Shropshire Lad

Self portrait 7-30-13

"The longest way must have its close --

the gloomiest night will wear on to a morning."

-- Harriet Beecher Stowe, Uncle Tom's Cabin

Self portrait (2) 7-30-13

"Might there come a time

When we stand over a grave

And mourn ourselves?

Mourn the past, a previous life?

Shall we weep for the passing of time?

Shall we grieve for unfulfilled dreams?

In my naivety; in my belief

In immortal youth, 

I sleep walk through life.

Someone ... wake me up.

Please.

Wake me up.” 

-- Samantha Young, Slumber

Today could potentially be kind of a big deal.

Today I am driving to a city about an hour and a half away, to a hospital with a sleep disorders center, to meet with a specialist who deals with chronic insomnia, to maybe, possibly, lay my sleep troubles to rest.

I am cautiously, tentatively optimistic.

Today could be the start of something good. 

It could be a step towards living again, towards reclaiming my life, which feels like it has been circling the drain for months -- dying a slow death, too exhausted and too wasted from sleep deprivation to do much else.

I've read and learned enough  about insomnia to understand that a permanent, non-pharmaceutical solution won't be easy and will probably involve a lot of hard work and effort. 

I'm prepared for that. 

The bright, hopeful side of me is, anyway.

I think.

   

I am also realistically, skeptically wary.

Today could big a big flop.

The specialist could tell me that a permanent, non-pharmaceutical solution is an impossible dream as she hands over a prescription and laughs like a cartoon villain. Bwaaa haaa haaa!

The specialist could simply say "You're fucked."

I'm prepared for that, too.

The darker, cynical, jaded side of me is, anyway.

Either way, I have to at least try.

And I will. Try.

Because I want insomnia to be something I once had. 

I want it to be a memory.

A bad dream that I was forced to stay awake for.

A visitor that came and way, way way overstayed its welcome, but ultimately left.

I want it dead.

A ghost.

A skeleton.

I want it, and me, to rest in peace.

Freak show

“We’re freaks, that’s all ... 

We’re the tattooed lady, 

and we’re never going to have a minute’s peace, 

the rest of our lives, 

until everybody else is tattooed, too.”

-- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey 

Self portrait 7-11-13

 “I was always an unusual girl.”

-- Lana Del Rey

“Eschew the ordinary, disdain the commonplace. 

If you have a single-minded need for something, 

let it be the unusual, the esoteric, the bizarre, the unexpected.”

-- Chuck Jones

“All forms of madness, bizarre habits, 

awkwardness in society, general clumsiness, 

are justified in the person who creates good art.”

-- Roman Payne, Rooftop Soliloquy

I may not be the bearded lady.

I may not have a conjoined twin dangling from my chest.

I don't have the face of a wolf, or an elephant, or a bat.

I am not missing, nor do I have any extra, body parts.

I am neither unusually large nor unusually small.

I don't swallow swords or eat fire.

I am not "half this" and "half that."

My "deformity," my "biological rarity," is insomnia. Chronic sleeplessness is the thing that makes me feel like a total freak of nature. Insomnia is the thing that has shunted me off the bright, happy midway of life and into the murky shadows of the side-show tent.

It may sound like I am exaggerating, but I don't think so.

Lying awake all night long, night after night, alone, physically and emotionally and psychologically craving sleep that evades and eludes, nerves jumping, followed by days where I am useless, strung out and rattled from the exertion of exhaustion, when all I want is to semi-regularly experience a basic, biological, natural, normal human function ...

Yeah. 

I should sell tickets. 

Step right up! Step right up! 

Maybe a few strangers gawking at me through the tent flap would lessen the loneliness. 

At least there'd be witnesses to my fabled sleepless reality -- people who could confirm, awestruck with jaws on the ground, "She was awake, the whole night!" because they'd seen it with their own eyes. 

At least I'd be earning a living from the very thing that, right now, seems like a midway pick-pocket intent on stealing my life right out of my hands.

For now, I guess the best I can do about it is to make art out of it, hence today's face.

I'd keep company with the other side-show freaks, but they're sleeping.

Re-tired

"Once I worked hard and thought a lot
but I never got tired;
now I do nothing and think of nothing,
but I'm tired in body and spirit.
My conscience aches day and night."

 -- Anton Chekov, Ivanov

Self portrait 7-9-13

“Tired, 

tired with nothing, 

tired with everything, 

tired with the world’s weight 

he had never chosen to bear.”

-- F. Scott Fitzgerald, The Beautiful and Damned

"There's a lot of good waiting for you on the other side of tired. 

Get yourself tired, Andre. 

That's where you're going to know yourself. 

On the other side of tired.”

-- Andre Agassi, Open

Giving insomnia the finger (actually four fingers because I hate it that much)

“Every time you come in yelling that God damn "Rise and Shine!" "Rise and Shine!"
I say to myself, "How lucky dead people are!”

-- Tennessee Williams, The Glass Menagerie

Fingers with cutout faces, one in stitches 7-8-13

“Do you wake up as I do, having forgotten what it is that hurts or where, until you move? 

There is a second of consciousness that is clean again. 

A second that is you, without memory or experience,

the animal warm and waking into a brand new world.”

-- Jeanette Winterson

“I didn't want to wake up.

 I was having a much better time asleep. 

And that's really sad.”

-- Ned Vizzini, It's Kind of a Funny Story

Hold on

"I like to use my hands and make things ...

It might seem pretty stupid or  pointless but that doesn't matter ...

Some of the most interesting work is the stuff that starts like that --

out of a raw need for activity."

-- Bruce Nauman

Self portrait in polymer clay 7-7-13

“I don't want to be the one who says life is beautiful.
I want to be the one who feels it.”

-- Marty Rubin

The morning after

“The simple truth is that you can understand the way you are. 

You can know and love and hate it. 

You can blame it, resent it, and nothing changes. 

In the end, you're just a part of it.” 

-- Brenna Yovanoff, The Replacement 

 

Self portrait 7-4-13

"I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.  

I learn by going where I have to go.”

-- Theodore Roethke, "The Waking"

This is a self portrait of exactly how I feel on a morning after a night of no sleep.
A morning like this morning.
You'll have to take my word for it when I say it's a pretty damned accurate likeness.
Weird, but accurate.
Seriously.
I mean, yeah, I know it's a plastic gumball machine monkey wearing a C-3P0 mask, but ...
Trust me.
It's like looking in a mirror.

Moody blues

“The memory has as many moods as the temper, 

and shifts its scenery like a diorama.”

-- George Eliot,  
Middlemarch: A Study of Provincial Life

Self portrait 6-26-13

“...trying to use willpower to overcome the apathetic sort of sadness that accompanies depression 

is like a person with no arms trying to punch themselves until their hands grow back. 

A fundamental component of the plan is missing and it isn't going to work.”

-- Allie Brosh, Hyperbole and a Half

Self portrait 6-26-13

“The momentum of the mind can be vexingly, involuntarily capricious.”

-- Gregory Maguire, 

A Lion Among Men

Feeling all kinds of everything, all colliding all over me, all at once, all the time. 

Dark circles

“Did you ever wonder if the person in the puddle is real, and you're just a reflection of him?”

-- Bill Watterson

Self portrait 6-21-13

“The girl in the mirror wasn't who I wanted to be 

and her life wasn't the one I wanted to have."

-- Francesca Lia Block, Pink Smog

“... the abyss you stare into and that stares back at you is your reflection in the mirror --

we all have it -- that shadow self -- that dark heart ...”

-- John Geddes, A Familiar Rain 

Sleep deprivation chamber

 "... night brings me many a deep remorse.

I realize that from the cradle up I have been

like the rest of the race -- never quite sane in the night."

-- Mark Twain

" We wake in the night, to stereophonic silence."

 -- Mignon McLaughlin, The Neurotic's Notebook

Self portrait 6-19-13

"Beware thoughts that come in the night.  

They aren't turned properly; 

they come in askew, free of sense and restriction, 

deriving from the most remote of sources."

 --William Trogdon 

"Ghosts were created when the first man awoke in the night."

 -- J.M. Barrie, Little Minister 

Escaping the labyrinth

“Never regret thy fall,
O Icarus of the fearless flight
For the greatest tragedy of them all
Is never to feel the burning light.” 

-- Oscar Wilde

Polymer clay face with maple tree seed wings 6-18-13

“It seemed as if he had been falling for years.
Fly, a voice whispered in the darkness,
but Bran did not know how to fly,
so all he could do was fall.”

-- George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones

"If God wanted us to fly, He would have given us tickets."

-- Mel Brooks 

“Oh No! My wings are effed up!” 

-- Tammara Webber, Between The Lines 

If you haven't figured it out by now, I enjoy mythology.

Greek. Roman. All of it.

I read Edith Hamilton's Mythology in a high school world humanities class and fell in love.

Zeus. Hera. Apollo. Mercury. Icarus -- the danger, the adventure, the deception, the romance, the gods and goddesses whimsically exercising their grudges with each other by fucking with humanity.

I was the only student in the class who was totally into it, I think.

Yep. 

I was that kid.

I was an English major in college, but I took a heavy load of classics, as well. My final thesis was a comparison of literary styles shared by the Odyssey and the Aeneid, titled "Virgil's Dialogue With Homer: Artistry and Vision."

How pretentious does that sound?

Jesus, did I really do that?

 

There is something about those old myths that still gets me.

I think it is the truth.

The truth about human nature in relation to unpredictable forces beyond our control.

 

Like Icarus.

Icarus was the son of Deadalus. 

They lived on the island of Crete, ruled by King Minos. 

King Minos had an elaborate, inescapable labyrinth where he imprisoned the Minotaur, a deadly monster. He threw his enemies in there too.

 

Deadalus (with the help of a hot chick named Ariadne) betrayed the king by helping another guy, Theseus. He gave Theseus a thread so he could retrace his steps out of the labyrinth after killing the Minotaur.

 

Minos felt betrayed, so he imprisoned Deadalus and his son, Icarus, in the labyrinth.

Being a crafty guy, Deadalus knew the only way out was up. So he made 2 pair of wings from osier (willow) branches and wax, and taught Icarus to fly.

It worked. 

Deadalus and Icarus flew out on their new wings and escaped the labyrinth.

Deadalus warned Icarus not to fly too close to the sun, or his wings would melt.

But Icarus got so carried away by the amazing feeling of flight, that he didn't listen. 

And, well, his wings melted, and he crashed and burned.

Technically, I guess he burned and crashed, into a lake. 

 

Lots of ink has been spilled about what the lesson of Icarus is, much of it having to do with the consequences of youthful disobedience.

 

My question is, is it better to stay trapped in the labyrinth, with no way out, waiting to die someday?

Or is it better to take a risk and cobble together a pair of homemade wings so you can fly out of that fucker and feel freedom, even if it's only momentary?

 

So what if you fall?

You are probably already falling as it is.

 

For me, the lesson is simple. Get out. Whatever it takes. You might stick the landing.

But if you don't ...

 

I'd rather die free than imprisoned.

 

Whatever your "labyrinth" is, whatever imprisons you, whatever confusing maze hems you in -- depression, addiction, chronic pain, anxiety, insomnia, all of the above -- with the right people helping, you can get out.

They might sneak you the necessary thread.

Or they might just build you some wings.

Take the wings.

Don't worry about the potential crash.

Just fly.