In my previous post I wrote about my recurring thoughts of being a nun — in truth I wrote it to acknowledge the thought itself, but if I excavated the roots, I think it wasn’t literally being a nun I’m seeking, but that way of life.
Is it possible to just be in the secular world? To be who I am, at my deepest core? To sort of blissfully ignore/accept the rigid rules of society and yet be able to carve out enough space for myself to be? To have the courage to be totally esoteric for the rest of my living years?
I mean, I tell people I don’t actually like money or the pursuit of survival, and I get these looks. I think that’s okay for some of us with a strong constitution — I know of people who are way more esoteric and they thrive. Yet I’m still learning not to take a psychic hit when I feel that alienation, that rejection. The feeling when I am not taken as who I am, but some ill-fitted perception people derive just so it makes them feel more comfortable.
Yesterday I was thinking to myself (another example of how weird my thoughts get): I feel like I’m stuck in this classroom and I’m uninterested in what’s being offered. So I can either quit the classroom, idle till the class is over, or just ignore what’s actually going on and do my own thing. I can’t quit the classroom because I may end up affecting the rest of the students — me not wanting to learn doesn’t mean I should negatively impact those who like learning. I can’t really idle either because being bored is a worse fate than death to me. So the only option left is to do my own thing, except I have to figure out how to do my own thing while being forced to pay the class fees and I have to more or less participate at the bare minimum else I’ll again, negatively impact the others.
I don’t really know how to reconcile my existence when I know it intertwines with others. The other day I casually told my mom again, I may consider being a nun, and the sadness and perplexity I got back in return…I’m not her, but I’m quite certain she’s asking herself why on earth did her child turn out like this.
I can’t really decide to just be without considering the impact of my actions on my people, and yet if I don’t develop some sense of my esoteric self, it will slowly kill me.
Over the years I’ve lost so many dear people to me because I wasn’t good at communicating who I was, who I was going to become, and what I needed. I wasn’t even good at being aware of myself. So by the time something needs to happen, it is too late. I end up disappointing a lot of people, because they expected me to somewhat stay the same as when they knew me. I expect the same of myself actually, and it never fails to be jarring when I discover I’m permanently changed, so I could never live the same way again.
It is painful. Sometimes I get so numb from losing people and losing my old selves — letting go of old identities are really hard — that I end up being in that sort of mood which makes me want to de-exist totally. How many times can I take these cuts?
I just don’t give a damn and I give too much of a damn.
But once in a while I get these glimpses. Like this morning. I’ve a dear friend from SF who took it upon himself to send me some pictures of something he knew would matter to me.
These are times when I’m still amazed at how terrible I am sometimes at being a human being, and yet there are people out there who still find it in themselves to stay with me, even if I keep deciding to do strange things with my life.
They are probably with me precisely because I do strange things with my life, and I practically have to hold on to them for dear life, because without them, I am not sure if I’ll be convinced to keep on existing.
I am still in the process of reconciling who I was, who I am and who I am about to be. It is definitely uncomfortable, and I’m trying to sit with the discomfort by writing publicly about it. It is one thing to be writing about my depression or suicidal tendencies, another thing to be writing about my design/storytelling experiments, and a whole other level to be writing about this – which I am not even sure how to label it. The disregard of what I know of life in order to have a authentic regard for it, if I have to guess.
I have always found the best way to cope with discomfort, is just to fully embrace it. There comes a point when it doesn’t feel uncomfortable anymore, that is when I have to remind myself to enjoy that peace, until the next round of chaos arrives for me.