Its like I can never just be.

I am saying that, after I spent three weeks with someone telling me the opposite. I was the one who seemed to know how to just be. And he wasn’t.

I emerge back into the world I am coming from, even just for a few days. And I am shocked, to see all the bags I am still carrying.

The chaos seems bigger now, because I thought I left it behind. But also clearer, because instead of getting completely swept away by it, I can actually observe it now.

“I can not focus on making money for a long time, but I can never just be.” Is where I am coming from. Hiking, building something, learning new skills, working on any project, anything with a visible result, cycling over mountains. Anything that keeps me busy, is fairly hard and I can show a result from, a proof I did something. And it’s weirdly disconnected from “making money”. Which makes it easy for me to disguise as the person calm and centered, able to just be and sit with myself.

Coming back here to the place I grew up in. Seeing the people I know since forever. It’s the most honest mirror I can hold in front of myself.

Suddenly all the bullshit falls away.

I can no longer hide behind my mask of self-growth.

I can see where indeed I learned to love discipline and I can see where spending hours journaling and talking about life can become another escape for facing the real work. I can see how surrounding myself with people I can feel better around keeps me stuck. I see how much I am still judging, without even wanting to. I see how even though I know exactly what I do not want, I haven’t put enough effort into the things I do want to build.

I see how much I changed and how much more I need to change.

I have come so far and yet I am still way to close to this life I was so eager to leave behind. I am still, in someways stuck in those old believes. After all those years and after breaking all those rules I still haven’t broken free completely from who I was supposed to be living in those streets forever.

Suddenly I remember why I wanted to get out of here so much. Back in the days it was just an instinct I couldn’t point my fingers to. It was never about the place. It was about what it represented to me.

Nothing ever changes here. It all just gets older.

The search for cheep weed would have been replaced by sipping expensive cocktails. Random dating by finding a husband. On cold and dark winter mornings I would still wonder who I got up for. I would be there Sunday morning, at the playground preventing my toddler from eating the cigarette-buds I threw around myself a few decades earlier.

Not different just older.

And that’s what I am terrified of. Just getting older, without actually having lived through all those years of my life.

Eating, sleeping, training and working is all you need, he said. And I am not sure wether I should be shocked or I should agree.

In a way it seems nice to be happy with little. Yes all you need is to look after yourself and contribute in one way or the other to your surroundings, stay connected to others.

And at the same time it sounds scary. Where is the vision? Where are the dreams?

When did you stop asking the deep questions of life?

Don’t you wonder what this is all about?

How it works?

Where it came from?

Who created it?

The truth is, I can still see myself in there, more than I would like to. I am still way to close to that life. It is still at the edge of my reality, very easy to slip back into. All it would need is one Job, one boyfriend, a few months getting into a routine. Sometimes all of it even sounds tempting, safe, real. And on the other hand I have an ocean of visions, little proof that it works, few results I can point out. And some undefined trust that comes close to madness, that it will all somehow work out in the end.

Am I just crazy?

(My brother says a crazy person, wouldn’t ask themselves that question. Reassuring.)

When I am here I feel like I am the crazy one every time. I know that. I know when I leave I love my life again. And yet I need it. I need to come back from time to time to check in with reality, to see where I actually stand.

And where do I actually stand? – At the edge, right where I belong.