growing pains x
Originally published 24th January 2024
She often wonders if there’s an easier way. If she’s making life too difficult on purpose.
Is she too stubborn?
Too ambitious?
Too controlling?
Too much?
Lately I’ve been lusting after rose-coloured glasses and the hills of Los Angeles. The Sunshine State.
That sunshine. That state.
Where cars roam along the pacific coast and Sade serenades the paved ways to possibility while billowing palms halo overhead the sunroof like crown chakras of the West Coast.
There’s a multitude of reasons way I’m finding my thoughts in LA lately, some reminiscent of my years living there, some missing the California girls and the late nights on Sunset.
But I believe the main reason why I’m escaping to la-la-land is because I’m escaping from trauma. From life and it’s challenges and complexities and lessons etched from the darkest of curriculums.
Over three years ago I made a 12-year dream come true when I moved abroad to my favourite city with lofty daydreams of the puzzle piece finally fitting into place.
What has surpassed have been the hardest three years of my life. Heartbreaks and compromises. Cold weather and exhausting days. Low bank accounts and low energies.
I began questioning if maybe I had tried too hard to control or manifest my outer reality when the Universe had something else in mind. After all, the spiritual books say we need to “surrender” so am I swimming against a current in a river that I really shouldn’t be swimming in? Should I finally accept it and get out of the river? Or should I just let the river take me?
Fuck.
Where would it take me? Will it flow fast or flow slow? Will there be rapids? Undercurrents? Waterfalls? Where will I end up?What will I anchor onto? Who will I anchor onto?
No wonder my ego is screaming to go back to the Hollywood Hills where everything is glitzy and warm and like a marble floor which distracts you from the real shit we gotta put up with.
Sometimes I say “Bring on the marble floors.” I don’t wanna know what’s really going on out there in the world. After all, I am only one person with no influence at all to change this society with its corrupt politics and insurance systems and backwards views on sexuality or marriage or platonic friendships.
Keep on streaming! Keep on swiping! Keep on escaping! Who wants to experience the hardships and heartaches and backbreaking pains and soul destroying realities to make real connections. To have real partnerships. To turn dreams into realities. To realize there is no “happy ending” because there is no ending and the grind continues. The work continues. The unlearning and learning continues.
No wonder we want to run for the hills sometimes.
No wonder. We rather be distracted or hypnotized or too tired to face reality and try our damndest to actually feel something.
Lately I’ve been flirting with singlehood and testing how deep platonic friendships can go. I’m done with surface level conversations and arms length respectable distances. Can we flirt and be affectionate and have attraction without feeling forced to act upon it and “make it official,” or rather suppress it to avoid shame?
Can we explore the grey areas between black and white, all or nothing? Can we be curious and observant and find comfort in the unknown without forcing labels or actions upon it all?
Can we sit with the trauma and look at it, observe it, see and feel how it changes and what affects it. And eventually, if we’re bold enough and still enough because we didn’t run away, can we eventually heal from it and plant new seeds in it’s soil where we just have to trust that pretty flowers will one day grow which will be ours and bring us happiness?
Can the girl who always explored and always dreamed and always painted the town red grow where she is planted? Can she thrive in external stillness with the same routines day in and day out, but turn her adventures and journeys inwards to explore new frontiers and find new sunshine states within?
No plane ticket or drastic life decisions needed.
Can she do that?
I’m not sure.
But I won’t know unless I try. And it’s uncomfortable, let me tell you.
These growing pains.
Growing… pains.
But surely it’s worth a try. It’s worth taking the emphasis away from external realities and marble floors, and instead searching for hidden gems deep within the soul which only start to sparkle from those deep connections and deep loves.
We must have
Deep courage to bloom where one is planted.
Deep courage to test the limits of platonic friendships.
Deep courage to be kind when those limits are crossed.
Deep curiosity to unlearn everything society has ever taught us.
Deep patience to learn and be guided by the heart.
Deep permission to not attach a goal or outcome to every action.
Deep trust that the work will continue even when we sleep.
Deep love to sit with the trauma and escape inwards.
She often wonders if there’s an easier way.
She often wonders.
x Lindsay
