About Saturday night

 

The other night upon opening up Instagram for a quick perusal, I spotted two of my best girlhood friends flanking a third friend in her wedding dress.

She got married.

And I never knew.

Granted she lives across the country, and we haven’t been in fabulous contact, but it was one of those moments marking the passage of time.

One of those moments where you realize how far you’ve drifted, how much things have changed, and in some ways, how they really haven’t changed at all.

I marveled how the three women all have the same quirky, vintage sense of style and how they all happened to live practically next door to each other.

Did they influence each other so deeply that 30 some years later they all dress similarly? Or was it true universal alignment that matched them together, on same street, at the same time, in a slice of history that will never be repeated?

I lived further away, still walking distance, but far enough so that I missed much of the girlhood shenanigans. I often felt like an outsider then, and I still frequently do.

 

As a very young girl, I chose to be alone much of the time.

Always on the couch, reading books, creating entire worlds in my head.

I loved The Babysitters’ Club and imagined creating my own. I played office, which I recently discovered is a weird thing that not many kids do. Thank my south node in Capricorn for that, representing many lifetimes of hard work and leadership.

In our backyard, we had an elevated deck, and I would pretend to be the star of a show, singing to an imaginary crowd watching on the grass below.

Always alone.

I don’t remember craving company. I was in my own little world. And that was enough.

After my dad died, and then my sister died, the aloneness became more palpable. I felt deeply isolated and wasn’t sure how to reach out to others. Nobody could really understand the pain I felt, and I dutifully hid it underneath a big, fake smile.

After cancer, the smile cracked. There was too much pain to hide.

I don’t keep in touch with many friends from my early years on the East Coast. After leaving, I was a drifter. Always creating shallow friendships but never anything very deep.

I felt uncomfortable sharing my true thoughts and feelings, and always ended up in relationships where the other person mostly talked and I mostly listened. At some point, I would inevitably get irritated, feeling unheard, and the resulting tension sometimes dismantled relationships.

I wanted friendship. Longed for it. But it was like a muscle I didn’t quite know how to exercise. As I’ve been learning more about astrology, I’ve discovered that my Chiron, which represents our deepest wound, is in the 11th house, representing friends and community.

Seeing the pictures on Instagram churned up old feelings.

My friend who got married ended up very successful, in charge of video production for a well known sports television network. Another friend runs a large non-profit. Another friend, also not pictured, has a daughter and lives in Ohio.

Many women, sprung from the same source, living many different lives.

 

A few days before this, I happened to see on Facebook a picture of an old boyfriend —

one of my first loves actually, holding his baby into the camera and comically opening his mouth as if he was going to take a bite out of said child.

This struck me in the same way as seeing my friends at the wedding that I wasn’t notified about or invited to.

The passage of time. The glimpse of another life. The pondering over the very many choices we all make leading us where we are.

I can’t have children. I had my ovaries out at 27 to reduce the risk of ovarian cancer.

I have a dog baby, and my husband who I love very dearly, and my work that I adore. I’m also making a sincere effort to connect more with women and heal my wounds, and have joined a yearlong leadership program for women centered on the divine feminine and lots of fun witchy, goddess things.

But I’d be lying if I didn’t say heading into my late 30s hasn’t made me ponder things…

What I’m doing. Why I’m doing it. What I really desire to give to the world. And how I want to live.

My husband and I are both very work focused. We sometimes dream about leaving the city life behind to live on land somewhere. I’d love to be in Hawaii or maybe North Carolina, someplace by the ocean.

He loves Idaho. It’s where his parents grew up, and he spent summers there.

Maybe if we could agree on where to go, the simple life would be ours.

Another parallel journey. A track untaken. A world unknown.

 

Our lives are a collection of choices, good and bad, each and every one.

One thing I’ve learned in life is, nothing is all good or all bad, each has a dash of the other, like the yin and yang.

It’s easy to see a picture or lose yourself in a memory, real or imagined, daydream or nightmare, and wonder if you made the right choices, if you’re where you’re supposed to be.

Life can be really painful.

I think that’s why we owe it to ourselves to focus on the beauty. To make something beautiful from the broken. To put our hearts into all that we do.

One of the great challenges of being alive is that by the time you have enough wisdom to truly live it, it’s time to go.

I used to get sidetracked by all the shoulda coulda woulddas. They nearly destroyed me until I learned to truly trust myself, to allow myself to pivot and follow my heart in each moment, even if it meant destroying something I’d worked hard to create.

But I think the ultimate real deepest truth, even though it sounds like a cliche, is that all there truly is, is now.

And the moment we allow ourselves to be where we are, accept ourselves for who we really are, and keep the faith alive for a bright future, the possibility for expansion comes.

One thing I know for sure is that each time I feel anxious that I’m not where I’m supposed to be and choose to relax into the tension rather than fight it, is the exact moment I connect to everything I was searching for all along.

The universe is always waiting to guide us. But to receive that guidance requires us to fully be here now and trust that where we are is perfect, and that who we are is so beyond worthy of love. No matter what.

Despite all the painful things that have happened, I’ve never stopped dreaming. I’ve already created so much, and dream of many more magical things to come.

According to astrology, in this lifetime I am not meant to focus so much on career.

But my dreams. They fill my heart. They drive me. It’s all I can see.

They blind me. Sometimes for good. Sometimes for bad. I’ve lost a lot of people along the way.

But after all is said and done, I’m still that little girl, singing on the stage to an imaginary audience.

Dreaming of worlds that don’t yet exist.

What does or doesn’t happen to us is but one small fraction of the moments that make up a life.

What matters more is how deeply we can stay connected to the secret worlds within us. And never lose hope that everything we imagine can be real.

 

What do you think? Share your thoughts in the comments below, and share with a friend if you feel called.

All the love,

Suzanne

 

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