This is a letter to my creativity coach Sara
Before our call I always give her a headsup.

Dear Sara,

A few years ago, something happened in my personal life, that changed the course of it.
There are very few people who know about it, and those who do seem to think everything is okay now. And I guess from a worldly perspective it is. It is now better than it has ever been, yes.

But that’s not counting that I am no longer connected to anyone. I’m incapable of human connection, or maybe it’s more that I am now aware that there never was any connection to begin with.
I am alone.

A realization that I have always been alone, yet wasn’t aware of it. Even though I have memories where I was 4 or 5 years old, sitting on the monkey bars with a few other children thinking:
“I do not feel any connection, and am sure they do.”
I was performing connection, and amazed that the other children seemed to have real skin in the game.

And I remember my youth, including puberty, being great. And that makes sense because my heart wasn’t in it.
The only times I “failed” at keeping my cool, was if I was in love, which explains why I have always made my love life a priority. It was the only area of life I truly felt alive. And sex one of the rare moments I felt connected.

But when I was in my late 20s, and after successfully dodging the pitfalls of many social expectations, I unexpectedly got sucked into them. And from an angle I had not seen coming.

Looking back, you could say the event from a few years ago, was the rude awakening I needed.
Now I’m back to where I always was; Alone.

But the process wasn’t easy.
It has taken years to breakup with my former lifestyle, the event was just a tiny part of it. The Great Untangling had actually started years earlier. From the very first signs until today, writing you this letter titled A Dark Chosen One, it was a decade.
A whole decade!
Before everything and everyone not standing in their raw unfiltered Truth,  and able to sit with me (or otherwise engage themselves with me on the monkey bars 😉 ) was gone.
A decade, to clear the jungle gym of my life.

Now don’t worry, I still have people in my life. People I love and respect, and my relationships are better than ever (yes). But I am no longer giving my heart.
It’s just no longer available, which is fine because that’s how it always was.
Just that I forgot. 

I’m not going to burn myself speculating if real relationships and connection do exist for other people, or if they’re just mistaking love for patriarchy and other capitalistic structures that promise a tribal belonging, but are actually just golden cages. Capitalizing on your dream of freedom by having you dig your own financial and legal grave.
But I just made clear what it looks like from where I am standing.

I remember when I told someone I was toying with the thought of connecting more to the spirit world, the realm of the unseen in the broadest sense because it’s totally unknown territory to me, and I feel it has so much potential.
And they replied, understandably, that they always shunned away from that because you have no idea what powers you’re dealing with.

And I thought: “We have no idea what powers capitalism and patriarchy are, yet no one shuns away from getting a mortgage.”
If I was standing in front of two doors and one would lead to shared finances and the other would lead to hell, and would pick hell any day.
Also: way more interesting people there.

So broad strokes you could say that from a very young age, I have felt different. And that all grown up I still have fears that are vastly different to those of other people.
Two more examples:
I remember when the pandemic started and the first two, three weeks, I actually detected a feeling of excitement within myself. Of adventure. Realness!
I really thought that in the face of sickness and death, the mold of decorum and  pleasantries would be broken and real connection would be possible with many people!
Only to conclude even less people were able to have a real conversation.
Second example:
A while ago I coupled the word apocalypse to a topic I thought I had lost interest in. So, for example (this wasn’t the actual thing), “Learn to love even during the apocalypse”. Only to realize much later this wasn’t a revival of this topic of interest;
It was in fact only the apocalypse, I was interested in.

Final example!
I used to live in a house in an area that had already been evacuated because it would be demolished. I absolutely fucking loved it….. The apartment went from great, to unforgettable. All the houses around me were empty. The street was empty and everything was pitch dark.
It even had the superintendent worried, when I had never felt more at home…

And if I envision the rare and unlikely scenario of a natural disaster or a war here where I live;
I already know for an absolute fact I will stay where I live now. Maybe get a dog and a gun for protection, but I will not evacuate, and I will sleep like a baby.
I am fine with death, and I am fine with loneliness.  

And if that ever happens – which of course I hope it doesn’t – then I will have proof for what I am beginning to understand. Which is that this is all connected. 
The isolation.
The loneliness.
The aversion to being swallowed by the system, or by a marriage.
The monkey gym at age 4, knowing I did not belong with the others.

Destiny.

~Lauren
An unexamined life is not worth living