One of the beautiful things about this life that I lead is that it is ever changing. To quote one of my favorite lines from a Disney song. “What I love most about rivers is, you can’t step in the same river twice. The waters always changing always flowing.” I was a Disney kid. I loved the sense of adventure, curiosity, and choice to engage that curiosity many of the characters decided to do, even against major warnings. Those stories would have been quite dull if those characters has chosen the most risk averse path. It is that curiosity and commitment to my own personal agency to make choices for my life that keeps me as a woman, always changing, always flowing. It does however come at a cost though, and the price I pay to stay curious sometimes means being in the in-between and desiring to reach out to someone familiar, one that lives in the past rooted in the memory of nostalgia. Join me as I gripe about how transformation sometime has you leaving behind people and places that you love, while the current version of you doesn’t support those connections anymore.
Ah. It is Summer of 2026 and I find myself single in a way that lets me know the work I’m doing to really embrace my life is working. No I’m not out here jaded thinking people suck. Yes there are women I would not touch with a 10ft pole, that ooze toxicity like Hexxus from FernGully. I’m not talking about those women. I’m also not in this bunker of peace that can’t be bothered to be inconvenienced by another living being who is anything other than perfect. No, I want the messy, mailable, deliciously flavored connection with another woman who is also on her own journey of becoming… and let me clarify. Aliveness for me is continuously becoming. Not stopping at a plateau, but deeply committed to living each decade to the fullest, with whatever that brings. The juicy. The complex. The rich and full of flavor that only gets found by the action of doing, not just the ideas of such. And here lies the challenge. Many of the people I encounter want peace, are trying to just survive, or are deeply committed to a routine that doesn't allow for much change. There is so little room in society for taking up the action and space of whimsy at large right now. But my Disney Princess ass is hopeful, optimistic, and never stopped believing in magic. And to be clear I’m wanting something that lives in interdependence, creativity, and art… not codependence, enmeshment, and loosing your sense of self… unless; I mean if its a good plot twist!
I digress. So in this in between, as I wait to meet the next love who is definitely going to grow with me in capacity, awareness, & creation, while also sharing the opportunity to sharpen relationship skills I’ve been working on improving, I have all this space and time and hope and begin to reminisce about all the good times and pleasurable moments of days gone by. See my intention is to be constantly looking at things happening FOR me vs things happening TO me. That has meant I’ve taken many of the conflicts in previous connections and utilized them as beauty and genus for my highest good. I'm asking where could I have left sooner? Where could I have said absolutely the fuck not? Where could I have just not even engaged in the first place? Taking my power back from shitty situations can look a variety of ways. This is how I do it in mine. My life. My rules. And it also helps keep me from living in the woe is me, because let me tell you, I can wallow in victimhood like nobody’s business, and that also doesn’t work for me.
This in-between period though leaves lot of room open. Although I am enjoying my life and integrating all the lessons, I don’t particularly find comfort in being left alone. Peace doesn’t rub your booty at night. So of course there is a pull to reengage with the good times of a past lover who did a great job of booty rubbing… except, I know for damn sure I’m not the same woman I was whenever that trip down memory lane was. See growth isn’t linear in the way like it’s depicted on those 2D graphs. No. It is full of detours. I have taken many of them. And because I have this desire to learn from every encounter of fuck around and find out, I stumble and bumble into growth… sometimes deeply scuffed up and tali betwixt my knees, other times head held high, dignity holding on by a thread, but in tact. Earned it. Anywho, with that growth I have learned that I am not the same person who is interested In the same things former me once was. I require a hell of a lot more. The cost has gone up. And that includes where I left those beautiful beings who shaped my life, for good, for bad, for ugly. I’m no longer the same girl. We cannot go back revisiting the past, no matter how much those memories of olde are intoxicating...
I mean all of the connections I’ve ever had, the relationships, situationships, lovers, and friends, at one point were a gift. They brought me a lot of joy, hell WE shared a lot of joy. Even the ones that were peppered with challenge, sometimes it was my bullshit, sometimes it was theirs, sometimes it was both of us competing for who could be the biggest asshole, but there was always something for some length of time that was really good about the time we occupied together. And that for me is a hill I will die on. I refuse to let my own and their humanity of the time in relationship we shared be summed up into some singular blip even when the bad outweighed the good. It really bewilders me the way people can dismiss or diminish an entire shared period as nothing. Which is probably why one of my biggest and most profound loves continues to perplex me to this day. Being able to experience that level of connection but not having a plan or a commitment/agreement based in reality as a way to proficiently maintain equilibrium between the two of us was nuts. It was that relationship that taught me how important it is to be able to name shit out loud and be transparent with not only yourself but the other in every way you can be. Most importantly though is sharing what kind of capacity is available to maintain a caring space while also accepting that it might not be enough. Love was never a question. The action and execution was always it. Both of us triggered over and over in that space. And even now, several years later I still look so fondly at the relationship we had because of how much love I got to experience in the way i did for the first time in my life. At the rate I was evolving it wasn’t set up to really be a sustainable relationship without some real investment and work by both of us. I grew and didn’t have the skills to ease into that growth with her. But even then, the capacity just wasn’t there to appropriately handle the new expectations and requirement I had that came with my growth.
One of the hardest pills to swallow is outgrowing people and relationships you once found refuge it. Relationships that were home, that were a safe space, that once were a place you were able to be held. Reminiscing about those times can pull you into wanting to reach back out. How are they? Is life treating them kind? What is their day to day looking like? What has changed, and what’s remained the same? When you do get to that place of missing them and wanting to go back, where curiosity bubbles to the surface with inspired action, do you stop and ask yourself what affect, what impact, what level of disruption will you cause by popping back in when you also know you have no intention to stay? That’s the other part of growth that is so hard. Knowing that I might cause unnecessary disruption returning because this space isn’t equipped for the current me, it’s still running on old programming, and I'm not interested in putting in the work to make it habitable. So instead the best thing to do is to just sit in nostalgia and reminisce on the ways you once laughed and smiled together. The ways you shared private stories and jokes. The memories you built, just the two of you. In the in-between of the you where you once were but you are now becoming, it is tempting to take a peak back. It's also important to remember they are no longer where you left them. See whether or not they have actively taken on a mantra of flowing and changing like the river, they have gotten older. New experiences, wins and losses have befell them. Life will have shaped their world and you were not a part of it. You were not a person in their life when they went through their own seasons of change. Just as much as you are no longer, neither are they. Even if you mean well, will making the choice to reach out benefit where you are going? Will it benefit them?
Seasons change and I will forever be grateful to the incredible women who've made my life so much richer by being a part of it, in whatever way that was. Today for me was an exercise to write about my nostalgia and the desire to reach out that it evoked. So instead of reaching out directly and potentially causing an unnecessary FAFO lesson that would FOR SURE have left me out here covered in crow, I wrote about it. At times I miss the version of me that could and would still engage with those beautiful humans who touched and shaped my world as much as I touched and shaped theirs. I do miss that version of me who was so optimistic and was like yeah, of course we'll figure it out. Girl, those are skills. Figuring it out takes skills, and capacity to learn those skills, capacity to be wrong, capacity to come back in earnest. Capacity and desire and some other skills and support as well. Unlike Disney movies, a great deal more effort is needed to navigate the complexities of relationships with others. You don't just get to slay the villain.
It was so good to write about my desire to revisit the past. It also is affirming to recognize and acknowledge when that desire to taste the nostalgia strikes, remembering that they also are not where I left them either. Everyone deserves their humanity. The recognition and consideration of their aliveness. Even if nothing else has changed in their lives, wherever it was that I walked away has had the potential to leave a crater and who I am now, won’t fill it because I, in this place of becoming, I am no longer the person who fits In that impression that was left behind...
This is your friendly reminder to leave them alone! IDC if you are bored. Leave them be. We don't need that plot twist, especially once you hit 40. Life is just starting and there are far more interesting plot twists to pursue. Use that 40 money, that 40 libido, that 40 wisdom to have the time of your mfkn life FAFO in new rivers and lakes! -Signed a 40yo creative menace!