Feeding the Fire

The scariest thing in the world is trying to break free.  Especially when your 30th birthday is right around the corner.  A part of me has grown complacent and lazy with the ideas that have been drilled into me by society; go to college, get a degree, get a job, work 40 hours a week, get married, buy a house, have children, retire, keep up with the Joneses, don't be weird.  Well, I hate to break it to you, but I am weird.  I am a six-foot-tall, cat-loving, poetry-reading, fantasy-novel-writing, childlike naturalist who believes that the world is inherently good and beautiful.  I hope that there are those of you reading this who think, "that doesn't sound weird at all!", but just wait.

I don't think I want to have a corporate career.  I still dream about it sometimes, when I'm darting by on the highway past the Safelite building at dusk, when the lights are on and I can see through the glass to the cubicles that line the room.  What must that be like?  I try to imagine, but that just sounds incredibly boring.  What do they do all day?  Send emails?  Faxes?  Make phone calls?  Surf on Pinterest?  I have worked at my part time job at a rec center for two years and I still don't know what half the people I work with are doing in their offices all day.  I would go crazy in a cubicle, or even if I had an office of my own.  I would feel sterile and detached from life.  This is why I love my current job, even though it's part time; I get to go outside.  Anytime. I. Want.  I get to run around at a park, identify trees, birds, and wildflowers.  I get to play.  I get to cover myself in mud.  I get to freak out when I see an owl or a hooded merganser or a wood duck at the wetlands.  This is what I want to do to make money.

I have never, for a day in my life, felt "normal".  Perhaps this is part of growing up and being six feet tall as a thirteen year old, perhaps this is part of being a socially awkward, introverted, highly sensitive and empathic child (though I never knew I was any of those until college and beyond).  But I tried.  Oh, I tried so hard to force myself into that mold that everyone else seemed to slide into so gracefully.  But it hurt.  I couldn't figure out why no one liked me, why my classmates always made fun of me, why I couldn't relate to anyone in my grade.  It wasn't until much later in life that I realized my self-consciousness probably stemmed from my own insecurities, that other people generally seemed to like me and tolerate me (or ignore me for the most part).  I don't remember any specific hate directed my way in high school, aside from the typical catty bitchiness that comes with female social groups of that age.  It was merely a feeling that I was trying to hide deep down, to lock away in a metal box and bury deep down, under feet of gravel and dirt so that it could never come out.

But I'm digging it up now.

Because now I realize that my desire to be normal only stemmed from inadequacies that I felt during childhood and adolescence.  I won't blame anyone, as blaming people merely makes me the victim, and I firmly believe that everything happens for a reason.  These hardships that I suffered through were to cause expansion, to catalyze my growth, and I have been sleeping through them for the past 20 years.  The beast is finally waking.

So look out.  I am on the hunt for an amazing life, and I won't accept anything less than things that make me feel excited and prosperous and alive.  Who cares if it's the opposite of everything society dictates?  I refuse to let the pressure to conform get to me.  I am going to live my life in the way that causes the greatest amount of expansion and spiritual growth.