Somewhere after the shadow work, the awakening, and the stripping away of everything you once knew to be true, life gets strange.
People you swore you could not live without become names you rarely say. The things you thought you needed find other hands. Even memory begins betraying its promises. A face you were certain you would remember forever starts fading around the edges, and no matter how hard you try, you cannot hear the voice anymore.
Maybe that is how you know something has ended. Not when it leaves, but when you can no longer resurrect it.
You loved. You lost. You loved again. Money disappeared and returned wearing different clothes. What looked like catastrophe became the reason something else happened years later. Eventually, you can look backward and see the strange precision of it all. Had this not happened, that could not have happened. Had you not stood there, someone else would not be standing where they are now.
Nothing stayed where you left it.
Neither did you.
Those who know you understand the silence before one of your decisions. It can last weeks, months, sometimes years. Every possible scenario gets examined in triplicate while everyone else assumes you are standing still.
They never understood that standing still was the action.
You were watching.
There is always one detail that does not belong.
Lately, there have been several.
Things that should matter suddenly don’t. Things you once wanted desperately look strangely small. The future you spent years imagining no longer feels large enough to live inside.
That should probably be frightening.
Instead, it feels familiar.
Like remembering something that has not happened yet.
And there it is.
The plot twist.
Maybe all this time you thought you were doing shadow work to heal from the life behind you.
Maybe you weren’t.
Maybe you were being emptied of everything that would have made you settle for the life you once thought was beyond your wildest dreams.
Because something very strange happens when the impossible starts getting close.
Your wildest dreams stop looking wild.
So keep on keeping on.
Whatever happens next is going to require a bigger imagination.
(Noah Kahan-The view between villages)
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