Dreams and Revelations

Do you ever go through periods in your life when, despite being a highly sociable person, you want nothing more than to sit in silence and just contemplate your life and where you are going?

It is no secret that I love to be around others, sharing thoughts and stories and just enjoying the company that friends can bring. It is why I count myself lucky to have so many good friends who are always ready for a chat, no matter how irrelevant or pointless it may be. And it is also why I love blogging so much too.

But recently my heart has not been in it and I watched as blog updates piled into my blog reader, never once feeling the desire to read. At first I put it down to the wedding and the time and attention the planning took up, but in truth there was a lot more to it.

The truth was that, in my own unhappiness in the way my life was heading, reading the words of others allowed jealousy to creep in as I saw the passion, conviction and faith of others in the direction of their lives and the choices they made. Jealousy is a friend of no-one and so the real reason for withdrawing from the blogging world for a while was to get to the bottom of my own feelings, rather than projecting them onto that which others had.

In essence I had everything I wanted and jealousy should have been a far cry from my mind: the wedding was imminent, we were thinking of trying for a baby and I was working on building a business I could work on from home…

But it was only when I achieved the dream of staying home and starting a business that I realised the truth behind this dream: it belonged to someone else. This may sound like a strange thing to say, but in my moments of solitude recently I have come to realise that the person I always saw in this dream was not myself but someone I thought I should be.

And this is a trap I have fallen into regularly throughout my life. We may say that such things as gender stereotypes no longer affect our lives in the same way as before, but they certainly have a lot to answer for still. No matter where its influence came from, I had this crazy idea that to be happy I wanted to stay at home, keep the house, craft all day long and bring up a family. Now whilst this is a beautiful dream and one that still fills me with warmth, I know I can no more do it than I could change the colour of my eyes. Sure, I could give the impression I had done so, but it wouldn’t be the truth.

It seems that the foundations I lay so many years ago were not leading to the place I thought they were and in truth I will not see the way forward until I learn to be who I am inside, rather than the person I believe people want to see when they look at me. Even more crucial is finding who I am rather than who I thought I wanted to be. I wonder if you have ever felt like this?

I have reworded this post at least half a dozen times, trying to make sense of the thoughts swirling around in my head. It is often hard to know what is true and what is a mere reflection of the truth. I have often been told that my writing is full of honesty and I hope that this will always be the case.

There are many changes occurring at the Patch right now, but one thing I do know for sure is that writing brings me a kind of peace and understanding and as such you can be sure that there will be many more posts coming up as these changes come about. So please do pop by again sometimes and don’t forget to leave a comment if you feel inspired to.