GROWING UP, PLUGGING OUT
10 years ago, when I would sit down and have my morning triple-shot long macchiato, I would read the morning newspaper.
Now, when I see people reading the papers over their morning coffee, and I sit here usually reading something to do with quantum science (pretty much my go-to morning study topic for ages now, although I do read on many other areas most days too!), I pretty much feel like – ‘I wouldn’t even know how to do that anymore’.
To be a person who starts their day by filling their mind with the news, current affairs, local celebrations and woes.
Sometimes I feel like this simple shift in who I was and who I am is the single greatest indicator of why I just can’t engage in any more than a surface polite way with people who are not like US.
I’ve had relationships end over this.
Friendships fade away.
I’ve often felt frustrated with myself for not feeling able to stop being such a snob about it, for not managing to get out of my usual headspace and just connect with people where they’re at, for not putting my need to feed my soul aside for just a minute or two, or an hour or two, when I on occasion find myself surrounded by, well –
Normals.
The other parents at the school gate or in the playground …
The cashier’s chit-chat about how hard life is at the grocery store …
The women I was once such close friends with, who, when last I caught up with them, honestly just bored me to tears with their endlessly rotating conversation which went between husband stuff-school stuff-house stuff-kid stuff and then back again.
I don’t care.
I don’t WANT to care.
I used to care, apparently.
But then I woke up.
I’m aware of the possibly ‘I think I’m better, superior’ vibe which is coming through in what I’m saying here. Well, I feel self-conscious about it! So I guess it’s MY stuff. But I also think, for sure, people might read this and think, ‘gee Kat, stop polishing your spiritual crown for just a second!’
Or maybe your opinion is that I should at least GTF over myself and just be part of the conversation, when those conversations come up.
“Did you see such and such on the news? Omg! It’s SO BAD, an outrage, how could they, how did he, blah blah blah”
“Isn’t it TERRIBLE how high petrol prices have gone?”
“Can you believe it …?”
“Did you hear about …?”
“And then I said, and John said, and Martha said, and well, I just really think – !”
I don’t care.
I don’t WANT to care.
I don’t want to TRY to care.
Whatever I actually need to know about the news definitely travels into my consciousness at some point, but to actually spend my life focused on this stuff? Start my day with it? End it the same? Have it as a focal point of connection all THROUGH the day?
I’d say kill me now, but there’s no need, because the me who WAS tapped in to that life is already dead.
She left the building.
A LONG time ago.
And I think that sometimes … when I am doubting myself … when I feel worried that it is somehow bad or wrong to be this person, always wanting, demanding, NEEDING, seeking, so much more … I start to buy into an idea that I need to bring her back.
I tell myself that the solution (not sure to what!) is to plug back in to the system.
To learn how to smile, nod my head politely, talk like them, be like them.
Perhaps they’re happier … content? At peace? With who they are?
Maybe!
Well, the truth is, when I step aside from those occasional moments of fatigue or weariness at the never-ending demands of my soul, when I drop the emotional drama which at times creeps over me and makes me worried I’m NOT DOING LIFE RIGHT, actually I AM happy.
At peace.
Content with who I am.
And I know it’s aligned, the way I choose to live my life, unplugged, and who I choose to be!
Besides, let’s not pretend there’s a choice here. I am who I am. I can try to mask it … I DID try that … it did NOT work, and it also looked and felt like shit on me. I was a sad shell of a ghost-woman, whose eyes were constantly far far away. Only gotta look at photos of me to see how NOT okay I was back then!
But yet.
And yet.
And still yet.
I do question at times. Or I feel, perhaps, sad. That I’m no longer the girl who I used to be. That growing up and shifting eternally forward, being the person who is programmed to upgrade, who has programmed herself that way has cost me so many relationships.
It’s cost me marriages.
It’s cost me friendships.
It’s cost me the simple fucking ability to just be, in quite a lot of so-called normal social situations.
And I do wonder, is it right? That I have this quest which will never be met and that I just CAN’T with these people or things anymore, even when I think that I want to?
Well, mostly I don’t wonder at all!
But sometimes, sure.
The thing is though, I look back at that girl and she was so numb. So sad. So trapped in various forms of self-abuse and escape. So many things which had to be in place just to keep her head above water, keep her surviving in the wrong life!
This girl doesn’t need those things anymore … she’s not numb, and because of that she feels, sometimes, maybe too much.
She wants to cry for all that could have been and that she feels in some ways perhaps still should be.
She feels like she should somehow be able to be all things to all people, even though she knows that’s not true at all!
She judges herself a LOT at times! And other times is unapologetically and audaciously baring her naked EVERYTHING to the world!
She sees the superior /egotistical side of herself in gazing at people who over their morning coffee read the paper, and wondering how on earth they can be okay with that … don’t they have ANY desire to go within? Sure, maybe they’re then getting on with a day of soul-fuelled everything! But, probably not!
And then she berates herself for that judgement, who is she to decide which way of living is better!
But, she suspects … KNOWS, really … that these people are, for the very most part, not happy.
Not content.
Instead lost.
Searching.
But not even knowing they’re searching, not knowing that that’s what that feeling is, thinking instead that it’s a sleep deficiency … a wine deficiency … a substance deficiency … an escaping and numbing deficiency … or that they just need a holiday!
And she feels bad. That she can’t relate to them. That they can’t fill her up. That she can’t be content with them. She feels like she should try harder! Listen better! Be interested!
But,
They’re just not interesting.
And the truth is, that as much as she at times mourns the loss of the girl who she once was, that GIRL would now not be interesting to the woman she is today.
There’ll always be love.
There’ll always be gratitude.
There’ll always be acknowledgement, that the journey was exactly as it was meant to be.
But because there’ll also always be growth, no –
Never shall the twain meet again, even if they wanted to.
It wouldn’t work, and it’s not possible anyway.
It’s tiring sometimes, isn’t it? It can feel heavy at times … wearying … annoying … ‘why do I have to be like this, always searching, always wanting more and knowing it’s available?!’ It can feel like too hard work, and we imagine at times, being one of those Mums who just sits down with a cup of tea and watches the news, or reads a gossip magazine, or phones a friend and laments the state of SOMETHING …
And today I suppose I just came here to say, that it’s okay to feel weighed down on occasion, with the responsibility of all that you have chosen to be, call in, insist upon, and create.
It’s okay to feel like you’d like to take a day off and run away and work in a bookshop!
It’s okay to lament the leaving behind of the old you, the old life, the old relationships, and to wonder if you couldn’t have, if you shouldn’t have, if you should still maybe.
Because the thing you have to remember is … this IS the life you chose. It IS the one you were turning yourself towards long before you made it reality. It IS the one you want. And the vast majority of the time you never question it at all, how could or would you? Heck, the vast majority of the time you certainly don’t even notice what everyone else is doing or what the old you would have done, you’re so in your own bubble and flow zone.
But when you notice –
Or when it catches you and makes you think –
Or when you feel you need to QUESTION, that maybe you’re not doing it right, maybe you chose wrong –
Perhaps it’s just nothing more than that today is a day to question.
To wonder.
To notice.
To be UNCOMFORTABLE with who you are, for a minute.
Because the reality beneath THAT is, that when you then go within –
When you do some serious investigative soul interrogation as of course you DO, in order to make sure you’re being the right person, the answer is always simple. Clear. And precise:
This was always who you were going to be.
Yes, it was always going to ‘cost you’ elements of the previous you, and sometimes that’s painful. They don’t call it growing pains for no reason!
But imagine –
Just imagine –
The cost of remaining that old you.
Plugged in.
Unknowing.
Accepting.
Masked.
Numb.
‘Safe’ from her own SOUL.
Well. No fucking wonder they all harp so relentlessly on about the state of the world!
It’s either that or else having to face the truth of the horrible reality that you never became who you were meant to.
And God knows they’re not going to do that.
Just as you never did, back then.
And then one day you did.
And you knew –
I can never go back again.
That’s all.
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