I can’t stop thinking about how strange it is to be a person. I mean, really.
You can spend years wanting something, working toward it, imagining what your life might look like if you could just get yourself to a particular place and then one day you're standing in the middle of that very life and somehow you're still trying to figure out what to do with yourself.
I've been having a lot of those moments lately.
There are so many beautiful things happening around me. Things I once wished for, things I worked very hard for, things that arrived in ways I couldn't have possibly anticipated. Sometimes I look around and feel this enormous rush of gratitude and disbelief (other times I feel like I could crawl into bed for three days and not speak to another living soul.) Both feelings are real and that's the part I've been sitting with and trying to understand.
We talk so much about growth and healing and “becoming” especially in the spaces I work within. There's always something to release, something to integrate, some old version of ourselves we're supposed to lovingly send off into the sunset. I don't know. Sometimes I think we're just really fucking tired.
Not necessarily unhappy. Not ungrateful. Not even lost, exactly. Maybe just so tired from the extraordinary amount of living that happens between all the things we're expected to do. Everywhere we turn we’re faced with decisions, responsibilities, people we love, the people we miss, the things we're building, the things we thought would last forever and didn't. We are constantly being faced with thousands of tiny negotiations we make with ourselves just to get through an ordinary Tuesday. Meanwhile, all of it is happening while the rest of the world continues on, completely uninterested in whether we've caught up with ourselves. The laundry still needs folding, someone needs dinner, there's an email you've been meaning to answer for six days and somewhere underneath all of that, an entire internal world is rearranging itself.
I've always been fascinated by the inner lives of people. How little we actually know about one another, even the people we love most. I think about it most in my treatment room. Someone comes in, puts their things down, tells me about their week. We laugh about something. Maybe they tell me about their children or their job or a trip they're planning and sometimes, somewhere between the warm towels and the quiet, something starts to move. They start talking about something else. (Or they don't.) Sometimes they just close their eyes and become very still and I think about how much a person can carry into a room without bringing any of it into conversation. How many different lives we all seem to be living at once.
I've been noticing it in clients, so naturally I start to see it in myself, too. There are parts of my life that feel so full and expansive right now and other parts that feel like someone has come in and moved all the furniture around while I was sleeping. Everything is technically still there. I just keep reaching for things where they used to be.
It's such a strange feeling to become unfamiliar with things you once knew so intimately. People, places, routines, even your own reactions. Sometimes I catch myself reaching for an older version of my life out of habit, not necessarily because I want it back, but because I knew how to exist inside of it and familiarity is a funny thing.
We can become accustomed to almost anything. Even things that exhaust us. Even ways of living that require us to make ourselves smaller or more available or endlessly accommodating. We learn the choreography and we get very good at it.
Until something changes.
Maybe something happens. Maybe nothing happens at all. Maybe one morning you simply realize you don't want to keep doing the same dance but that doesn't mean you suddenly know another one.
I think that is precisely the part we don't talk about enough and makes my brain itch the most. To exist inside this strange little space between recognizing that something needs to change and actually knowing what your life looks like afterward. There's grief in this space, even when the change is welcome but theres excitement, too. Maybe sometimes there’s guilt, which has a particularly annoying way of inviting itself into situations where it has absolutely no business being.
I've spent a good portion of my life believing that if I could understand something well enough, I could make peace with it. I've analyzed people, relationships, decisions, the past. I have turned things over and over in my head until I could see every possible angle. I've searched for explanations long after the explanations stopped being particularly useful.
I'm very good at finding meaning in things, maybe too good.
I say maybe because lately I've been wondering if my need to understand everything has sometimes kept me from simply experiencing it. Not everything needs to become a revelation. Maybe sometimes something is sad because it's sad. Sometimes you're overwhelmed because there's too much happening. Sometimes you can be absolutely certain about the direction you're moving and still feel terribly homesick for something you've left behind.
That should be enough of an explanation.
There is something I've noticed about the body in all of this, too. We tend to think of our lives as these great intellectual and emotional experiences, but so much of our ordinary existence is physical. The jaw tightening while we concentrate. The shoulders lifting when we're anxious. The breath changing when we're trying very hard to keep ourselves composed. I see these things every day in my work and I'm increasingly curious about how often we notice them in ourselves.
How easily the body can become accustomed to effort and how strange it can feel to experience a moment without it.
I don't believe every ache or pattern of tension has some hidden emotional story waiting to be uncovered, bodies are far more complicated than that. But I do think we underestimate how much of our lives we spend bracing for one thing or anothe and it makes me wonder how many of us have become so accustomed to holding everything together that we no longer recognize the effort involved.
Maybe you've felt some version of this, too. Maybe things are going really well and you can't quite explain why you feel so overwhelmed. Maybe you've outgrown something you once loved and are having a difficult time admitting it. Maybe you're genuinely happy and also grieving. Maybe you're in the middle of making a beautiful life for yourself and wondering why some days it still feels so hard to be a person inside of it.
I wish we spoke about these things more openly. Not necessarily the details, I think we're entitled to keep parts of our lives for ourselves, but the experience of it. I think there's something comforting about recognizing that other people are living complicated, beautiful, occasionally bewildering lives, too.
This week, I've been trying to give myself a little more room to be unfinished, which sounds very nice in theory, but is proving to be a rather difficult thing for someone who has spent most of her life trying to understand absolutely everything. I'm beginning to wonder how much of my life I've spent trying to get to the other side of it. The other side of a difficult feeling, or an uncomfortable conversation, or even a period of uncertainty. Even the beautiful things seem to come with this peculiar anticipation of whatever might happen next. That has been the strangest realization to have when you've worked so hard to build a life you actually want to be present for.
I suppose what I'm getting at is that I don't want to spend so much time trying to understand my life that I forget to live it. I don't want every experience to become a lesson. I don't want to dissect every feeling until I've managed to convince myself it makes sense. I don't particularly want to emerge from every difficult season as some wiser, shinier version of myself. Sometimes I'd just like to have a nice afternoon, to sit somewhere warm, eat something delicious, laugh with someone I love and notice the way the light moves across a room.
It's funny, because I've spent years trying to make a beautiful life for myself and now I'm realizing part of the work is learning how to actually be here for it, and not once everything settles down or when I finally understand what's happening. Just here, right now, in this moment.
Anyway, these are the things I've been thinking about lately, maybe I'll have something entirely different to say about all of it in six months.
I probably will.
with love,
Paige 𓆸
Sacred Skin Alchemy · Long Beach, California
a little more to explore 𓍯
If something here resonated, perhaps you'll find a little more of yourself in these other reflections.
La Casita — on creating spaces that feel like home, finding beauty in the ordinary and building a life with intention.
More Love Letters — collected thoughts on being human, the places we go, the things we carry, and everything in between.
The Art of Somatic Care — exploring the relationship between the body, intentional touch, and the quiet practice of returning to ourselves.