I'm the one I've been waiting for

We are all stardust: Just a ripple in the folds of time

“I believe a leaf of grass is no less than the journeywork of the stars.” - Walt Whitman, Leaves of Grass

I think about death a lot. Every day, even. I’m mostly ok with it; ceasing to exist. Existence is beautiful, the fact that we’re here now on this incredible planet filled with all kinds of miraculous plants, animals, landscapes and weather conditions is a miracle, but ceasing to exist feels right. It’s the natural order of things and a bit of a relief, if I’m being honest. And anyway, the ceasing to exist part is what makes the living part so spectacular.

I don’t believe in a soul so much as energy. I read somewhere that we all started as stardust and it resonated at a cellular level. I think about that a lot too: Every atom of oxygen in our lungs, of carbon in our muscles, of calcium in our bones, of iron in our blood - was created inside a star before Earth was born.

When you think about the unique cocktail brewed within stars that was the exact ingredients required for life on Earth that needed to be present at exactly the right time… People, Earth, existence at all is incomprehensibly miraculous. We are a mathematical anomaly. And, to me, those statistical odds feel liberating. Empowering, even. It locks everything into perfect perspective.

We all spend most of our lives lost in the Matrix.

The job, the money, the accolades, the wrinkles, the extra weight - none of it really matters. What does matter is so basic: Love, kindness, honesty, relationships.

Yet humans are locust-like. A plague. When we’re done torturing each other, animals, forests, oceans and otherwise ravaging Earth, effectively killing ourselves off, the planet will do what its done for billions of years and cycle through more geological scales within time. That also feels like the natural order of things. Empires rise and empires fall.

Maybe humankind makes a comeback, maybe it doesn’t. Unlike most folks, I don’t feel precious about preserving humankind. I can’t even rightly say we had a good run. We’ll ultimately get what we deserve and, at this juncture, extinction feels just. Pessimism or realism? Who’s to rightly say?

The only part of my specific death that causes me concern is leaving my kids behind/missing out on their lives. But that’s the natural order of things as well. We’re all just a ripple in the folds of time. From stardust we came and to stardust we return.

There's a starman waiting in the sky
He'd like to come and meet us
But he thinks he'd blow our minds
There's a starman waiting in the sky
He's told us not to blow it
'Cause he knows it's all worthwhile

- David Bowie

At some point in life you look hard in the mirror and call yourself on your bullshit. This is a good day. A lucky day. Not everyone experiences this day. In fact, I’d argue most people do not.

Calling yourself on your bullshit isn’t about judgment, it’s about compassion. Radical honesty and compassion are the keys to recognizing your unhealthy patterns and working on them. Understanding the origins of those unhealthy behaviors helps, but isn’t necessary.

For example: I tend to be a very controlling person.

Because I was raised in a chaotic, unpredictable, physically and mentally unsafe environment, I became a controlling adult because, for me, control is safety and reassurance.

Attempting to maintain control for perceived safety is a trauma response. I typically fear uncertainty and try to control as much as possible to guard against all the uncomfortable or bad things that I perceive might happen.

Learning to release the impulse to control doesn’t necessarily require me to understand what in my childhood caused me to become that way, but connecting it to my childhood did help me understand that my inclination to control isn’t just me being an asshole or a mastermind manipulator, as I have been called by past partners and myself, it is me seeking safety and is an entirely rational response to what I’ve experienced. This comprehension triggers compassion for myself and the compassion helps me continue to recognize and let of the need to control circumstances and people.

You are safe now, Monica. And the only thing you can truly control is your responses to life’s circumstances.

Shit, try to control anything in your life when divorce requires you to live in a certain area, child support requires you to maintain a specific job tied to a salary that doesn’t really belong to you anymore and shared custody requires you to split holidays and seek permission to travel anywhere. Control? Ha! Yet it’s all of these painful challenges that led to the personal awakening I’ve experienced over the past few years.

Instead of the swirl of uncertainty, insecurity, fear and chaos that pervaded my childhood and most of my adult life thus far, I am recognizing and developing the real me. Instead of the knee-jerk conditioning in response to the scary childhood that formed my personality, I am finally figuring out who I really am. At forty-fucking-seven.

I can apply the recognition + honesty + compassion = liberation equation to work on other challenging aspects of my personality: Insecurity, obsessivee people pleasing, anxiety, defensiveness, social anxiety, overly emotional responses etc.

I have spent my entire life waiting for the adults around me to step in and help. First my parents, then friends, friends’ parents, boyfriends, my ex-husband… I was always waiting for or trying to turn someone, anyone, into my savior. Even Cory.

But it’s me. I’m the one I’ve been waiting for. After nearly half a century languishing in survival mode, I am the adult who is saving me.

I turn 47 this Wednesday. I’m pumped about it. Stoked to have made it this far relatively intact and happy that I have more time to try to figure it all out.

As our bodies age, we spend so much time worried about wrinkles or gray hair and not strength, both physical and mental. I feel so proud that I have never felt stronger both physically and mentally and I’m so fucking grateful for both.

When you put the incomprehensibility of our existence together with the lucky day you recognize your real self in the mirror and toss in good physical health you have the ingredients available to live the best years of your life. Which is what my beloved therapist told me at our last session.

I had been seeing him weekly, then bi-weekly since 2021 and I recently recognized that I was struggling to find issues to discuss with him. Sure there are always little things but I didn’t want to be scraping the mental health barrel for fodder for each session because that seemed counterintuitive to mental health.

We decided to transition to an as-needed basis. If I need him, I can make an appointment. Otherwise, here I am, doing my thing, relying on my own judgment.

“I think the next ten to fifteen years are going to be the best of your life,” he told me at the end of that last session. And I believe him.

I was in such intense mental pain and anguish when I first reached out to him. I am not that person anymore.

How do you articulate the monumental gratitude you feel toward someone who handed you the keys to the kingdom; someone who showed you how to exist as yourself; someone who revealed yourself to you?

You don’t, really. You tell him thank you and walk out of his office just like you always do.

And then, if you’re me, you write this newsletter. I love you, Diljot. And I will ignore you at the grocery story if I see you. Thank you for everything.