Can you wish to hurry and slow down, at the same time?
Like waiting impatiently for a pinball to drop into its slot, while still letting it linger at its own pace.
This piece lives in that same limbo state.
For two weeks now, it has been hitchhiking from one state of mind to another.
Maybe I can speak on the points that are most presently wafting up to my senses.
Privacy. Presence.
I feel more at ease being seen, but also recognize that privacy is part of my personhood.
I want people to know that I share things as an offering. I give it as a gift, and like when they treat it this way without me needing to ask explicitly.
I have felt, lately, more present when, for example, meeting new people. Self-consciousness once occupied so much of my ability to be present in the moment, that seeing it cool over the passage of time is miraculous even.
I’m learning how to answer questions so that I do not betray my value for honesty, transparency, and authenticity, with a new recognition of my value for privacy, and intentional shares.
Recently I shared with someone that’s seen me through many versions of self, that I was quite happy to have shed all visible evidence of those versions. It feels like a second life, and now that I have a new lease over controlling my own narrative, I’m holding it so tenderly.
With this new agency, I wonder, what shall I add to my legacy that I will be happy to leave after I die ? Perhaps, I am uptight in thinking about that, because after all, it doesn’t matter. I won’t be here to witness any of it.
I still try, privately, to maintain as much control over what becomes public, because I’ve once experienced the loss of that through my own neglect of self.
I just want to be there for me, too—just as I’ve learned to be more fully here for everyone else.
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