Working Through Shattered Illusions and Finding Your Spark Again

I have this looming sense that I am bound for something greater than what life is providing right now. I feel like I’m sitting in a cold, dark waiting room, waiting for my turn on stage. Am I being pretentious? Is this entitlement? I don’t know, but I feel that there is so much inside of me that never gets to sprout past the earth of my soul to see the light of day. There’s so much that’s unexpressed and it’s crushing. I know that I have the power to communicate my experience and relate to others who have similar feelings of self-loathing, trauma, ostracization, and more. I now know that my sensitivity towards everything is not a weakness, but a source of greatness. My sensitive nature is my power, and it is the avenue of my art. I want to share in the sensitivity with others. I want to share in the pain. I want to share in the curiosity. I want to share in the wonder. I want to share in the infinite frustrations of the injustices of our world. I want to connect with others. I often feel like I am starving.
We have been working so hard towards the wedding and honeymoon and getting established in Asheville, but now I am left a vacuum of purpose? Now what? I don’t know, but I find my current job energetically draining. It consumes so much of my mental and emotional fortitude that by the end of most days, there is little energy and intrigue left to pursue my passions and interests. I have lost interests. I have seen it over the recent months. It feels like running in circles. I have a mounting fear of never getting out of this bubble, that I will never be able to gain traction with any of my genuine interests and talents and creativity and it frightens me. It depresses me. It feels like I am stuck in a loop and I don’t know how to get out. Where to even begin?
I have these expectations for my life. I want to move about, I want to travel the world, I want to learn interesting things, I want to research, I want to discover, I want to have experiences that build character, I want to grow my love and understanding of people, I want to be heard and understood. I want to experience that innocent joy of wonder from my childhood, those precious moments between the pain and isolation. I am holding onto so many expectations. I have always brutally scrutinized myself and held myself to unfair standards. I deal with so much. Most days, it’s a feat just to get out of bed. But I see the potential within me. I see the infinite possibilities. I see the wisdom and the passion. I am just constantly losing it in the mucky waters of responsibility as an adult in this cold, individualistic, capitalist society. This culture is sick with our own Covid of the mind. I feel like so much of what I was taught growing up….the patriotism, the American Dream, the belief that working hard will get you everything you want, the belief that everything will just naturally progress upwards, the belief in a fair and free society, the belief in a just and loving God, the belief in the infallibility of the power structures in place, the rankings, the classes, the statuses all being justified and right, and on a personal note, that my family’s sacred bonds would never be broken…..so much of these beliefs have crumbled before my feet as I have trudged through my 30s.
What am I supposed to make of this, when the city of belief that I built around me is nothing but a mass of rubble now? The edges around the framework of security I was so accustomed to have broken and are spilling out all of the hope I had for this life. It’s so easy to spiral down. But I am not ready to give up. I have foothold moments that ground me, secure me, and bring me back to a place of peace and bliss and intrigue. Just like last night, I started a new audiobook recommended by my therapist, “Radical Self-Acceptance” and I watched a podcast on consciousness by a world-renowned physicist. These things give me new perspective and food for thought that I can react to and chew on for a time. It’s a journey of the mind, never knowing where your thoughts and feelings might take you. “Wow, I have not considered that perhaps it’s not that I am not enough, but that the society I have grown up in is immensely sick and rooted in shame and fear and that collectively we are still in our infancy stages of discovering and truly practicing love and connectedness with one another. Wow, I have never thought of consciousness in this or that way. Perhaps consciousness is not computational but a byproduct of a much larger phenomenon outside of the traditional rules of physics and systems of measurement. Perhaps it doesn’t simply arise from brain activity but comes from a much deeper quantum place which we haven’t even a tentative understanding of at this stage in our collective knowledge.”
These things fascinate and intrigue me. These things give me so much inner joy, it feels like something as automatic as breathing. It’s like discovering new music that touches your soul. Last night was a good night. It makes me realize how long I have been holding my breath and struggling and gasping. I will use this as a jumping off point to follow my heart and my mind to whatever might spark something within me. I don’t want to give up on this life and reduce it to a series of traumas, oppression, and injustices. It’s a cruel world but it’s also a beautiful one. There is so much to discover while we are here for the briefest of times. I just want to live in my truth. I want to say I did it my way and no one else could have done it. I want to leave my mark. I will find a way. This is my belief going forward.
Ultimately, I just want people to understand me and find that spark of connection that binds us. So much of my life, I have felt judged, ridiculed, and misunderstood. But I remember that I am enough, and that none can be expected to truly experience the songs of my soul the way I do. And that’s okay, I can let them out into the air anyways to be carried off however they will be, for I am beautiful. Reminds me of a quote I found recently that I love. I’m not sure who said it or the context around the quote but I think that it speaks for itself.
“And those who were seen dancing were thought to be insane by those who could not hear the music.”