This seems as an appropriate of a starting place than much else could. Being okay with losing everybody and everything. Being okay with being seemingly left behind. Being okay being totally isolated, alienated, and left to one’s self. What if near all got what they truly wanted? What if sometimes it’s a blessing? What if it’s a blessing for the most that matters most? What if there is beauty in simply existing? What if there is beauty in simply existing in mostly solitude?

A coworker approached me at my fiat job the other day and asked for a hug. Upon embrace he burst into tears. In opening up about his interior struggles in that moment, he reflected how good it felt to see someone authentically glowing and laughing from within all on their own. That it let him know it was possible. He knows my life is anything but easy in having lost near everyone close to me that I loved, though he knows not any of the reasons, yet he sees me day in and day out. He’s knows I am strong mostly all by myself in this moment of my life, even as I am aware and reservedly open that my life is somewhat in shambles.

On that same day, a regular customer of mine came in after a bummer of a day for him just to share in some lighthearted laughter and smiles with me. He said it without saying it precisely, but it was enough for me to understand it.

The following day too, another regular went out of his way to let me know that, while the food and beverages are great where it is I am employed, he wanted me to know the reason he comes in consistently is to see me specifically. That he simply enjoys my presence and energy and watching how hard it is I work. The way I smile through chaos and storms a plenty. We had a good laugh about it. This is not an uncommon sentiment I hear as I go about my mundane labors these days. Again.

It all being a confirmation from beyond that I am indeed farther along than I think in moments with getting back to me. Being in my own nature and skin wholeheartedly and lovingly after a few too many years of experiencing something rather different. A decade really, of being posited and gaslit out of my grounding. Not one human who thought less of me, inherently, made it this far with me, however.

My whole life, random people have opened up to me. Some that know me better than others. Sometimes total strangers in brief passing moments. The world may not have room for me, may not value much of anything that has come from me, and maybe never will, but consciousness itself still does. Maybe it is even more meaningful for me now that I’ve felt the collective shadows’ rage and hate and pity seemingly directed in part for me. For collective consciousness having consciously transgressed in frequencies, the likes of me, in the first place.

We don’t get to choose our paths in all circumstances. We do, however, always indeed get to choose how we respond. I move out of the hardest chapter of my life with the same grace that has always become me.

I don’t fit in anywhere anymore. More and more life shows me how that is so. Nothing really aligns for receiving as much honest with me, but I’m not in a rush to change it. I rather like having to not let anyone too close in given what my personal life has endured and become.

To be a woman and not have to let man or woman, nor parent or sibling or friend physically or intimately close in, for now, it feels right and just where it is I need to be. I am single and healing. I am single even from my closest friends and too healing. I am healing from having been the scapegoat in my family. And reconciling that I have nobody that richly nourishes me close in my mundane life. But I do. I nourish me infinitely again.

Maybe I am where I need to be because of what has happened to me and in that life has yet to meet me differently. What if I never need it to? What if I need to never need it to because it never will? What if that’s what I’m here to learn? Maybe everything is perfectly as it should be even if it hurts.

I for one know I am capable of much now. Yet I also know I can’t swim against the currents. Nor do I really want to.