It’s a fact of life that sometimes the only remedy for life lost is
Love, patience and tears
So, let the floodgates open and let the healing begin

Thee Sacred Souls, Sorrow for Tomorrow

I’ve always been someone who thought they never had much to say. Sometimes I still feel that way (a lot of the time, actually). But in the last couple of years, I’ve had a distinct feeling as though I’m meeting everyone in my life for the first time again.

I’m still me, though, right?

“I didn’t take you for the type to be into X.”

“That’s not something I expected out of you.”

“You’re always up to something!”

I guess not.

I didn’t realize, until very recently, that maybe the only reason people react this way (aside from actually meeting me for the first time) is because I don’t talk about myself, much less about who I’m becoming. I have nothing to prove to anyone, so the notion of making myself the Topic makes my skin crawl, as though I’m coming up to the stand to make a defense no one asked for. But this isn’t about that. It’s easy enough to be the Listener, I’ve done it for as long as I can remember, but being the Topic means commanding space.

That’s a tricky thing to do when you’re so used to forfeiting it.

Another thing I’ve often thought and said is that I bring nothing new to the table. People get worked up into such a frenzy to prove me wrong whenever I say so, thinking it’s some form of bullying or put down, but I’m not talking about Me, I’m talking about being human. My experiences might be unique to me, but the lessons I learn, the feelings I feel, and the way things just ‘work out’, are universal. They can and do happen for everyone, not just me, and they’re all measured on the same sliding scale of intensity, if such a thing there be.

So then, if we arrive at the same thing, our human-ness, isn’t it comforting to hear that we’ll all get there, no matter the road we take?

I think so. I hope you do, too.

Fair winds and following seas,

Nopal