Where did all my main character energy go?

The fact that I am still holding on to my soul here, letting her speak slowly, has been the bravest thing I have done over the past two years, and I am grateful for those who still stand by me quietly, reading and supporting whatever I write. This post is a soft rebellion. Please don't mistake it for active mourning. Whatever I write here has been my silent healing. And I am happy you are still here.

I am 27. I don’t know if I can call myself a mindful woman yet. Now this may seem like getting myself down a rabbit hole. But no. I am only trying to write about what I can't stop feeling. I am writing about what questions my worth. I am trying to take it all one step at a time, slowly confronting what needs to be said and what has to be held mindfully. I don't mind being seen as obscure or sensitive. I grow as I write about it here. And I am not feeling any less to be seen trying to understand myself better with everything I feel. With every post that takes me closer to who I am, I can still choose to become more honest in this journey. This writing is as important as my soul trying to talk for herself. Please listen with care.

I feel stuck somewhere between being a girl and seeing myself growing to be a woman(not the one I was expecting to become), but the one I became anyway. When you feel like disappearing between the invisible parallels of accepting who you were and who you still keep yearning to become, know that you are only trying to be more honest about yourself.

I don't know whether any of you will understand the weight of having your age run faster even before knowing you ever truly lived them. I know I’ve lived as it came, but there is also this huge portion of living slipped into a void, which I was not quite aware of. I am writing this on a late Sunday morning, 7.31, pausing a class I was attending to clear my junior research fellowship exam. Maybe it is getting me more exhausted, so I want to hear myself writing. Maybe I want to just relax and give myself some time to process what I'd been silently accepting to do. I don't know if clearing this exam would set my soul wholeheartedly free or well accomplished. But I know it has only become more of a weight than a dream. I was also physically getting weak along the way. Almost 2 long years had walked past me, even without me realising I was losing all my main character energy to time. Now, this might seem a bit too much for those who know me personally, but I cannot stop hearing that little voice rising in me anymore. I don’t want to have it all stuck up in my head, or even want to figure it out. I want to unburden everything that I have been unconsciously adding to my soul in recent years. I want to write about it, not to heal or cure it, just to say I am still here.

Share Coming of SOUL 🦋

I have dreams. I have responsibilities. I want to make progress. I want to add value both financially and emotionally to my family. But somewhere between wanting all this and trying hard to get all this, I am losing sight of what my soul is dearly aching to do. I know what it is capable of doing despite all the mindless deterioration. But I could not sit for it with this growing weakness swirling in my legs. I’ve misplaced my peace with accountability, needing to prove I'm capable, but I did not know it would come with the cost of losing my stand for what I want in the later years. And all those later years are here like a lump in my throat, but I am left wondering where did all my main character energy for active participation go, whether I had truly lived it up to my yearning or not, whether I had given myself the hope or not or whether I'd honestly let my soul see me enough or not.

Time now seems like a fast-moving train, though the journey in the beginning had started off slowly on a balanced pace, I was only losing track of what would support my mental system in the long run. All of my efforts to prove I can be of little help are now draining with every step ahead, while trying to hold it all together. I have missed a couple of chances in clearing the needed score for the exam. Yet I was trying to improve very little by little. It wasn’t helping, anyway. I have only been mindlessly drifting apart from the centre of what I needed the most to keep my soul excited.

Drawing always felt like coming home again. I am not a regular. But I am called to do it whenever things get out of focus, when the outside world feels heavy, when I dwindle between what is expected of me and what I want for myself. I can't meet them together. I either let myself down or let their hopes down; I am somewhere in the in-between. I get stagnant, with how time has been carrying me on its edges. I am not mourning the version of me that I'd lost to time or age. But I only mourn how stupid I have been to calculate everything by my head and not by my soul. How messed up I have been without realizing I was already getting ruined by an unattended life. How headstrong I was in accepting life as it came. I thought certain accomplishments would keep me safe and good at heart. But underneath all the layers of outward expectations, I was silently losing my muse, my little curiosities for life that kept me alive, that kept me up late at night doing everything that meant like living for my soul. I wanted to follow its calling, never questioning or doubting what I was going after. I was sketching when the world outside went silent. Those 2 a.m.-4 a.m. drawing time became something very satisfying, where life seemed all real, exhilarating, and soul-driven. I wasn't examining too much, but living just as it was, just as I felt, and was easily drawn to. Those were my little lived moments that happened on its own will. I now dearly miss all those effortless yearnings. Of course, I still have them, but not often, and not just with the same strength and energy. There are so many other things that make this yearning more impossible to arrive. But I won't stop asking for it. I won't stop aching for it. It has been my only muse, after all, and I am not going to lose it for anything or anyone. I will keep coming back to it, even if the road ahead gets hard to walk on, even if my body has become very feeble. I am weak only by the bones in my legs, but never weak in my soul. It may slow down, but never disappear. I will hold her. She'll hold me even more tighter. This is how I have been saved lately. Writing here has become a way of healing from what I don’t always say aloud. And here as I write, I feel deeply seen.

Right now, I feel lost, maybe because I am trying to live for the outside world, and also because I have not been caring for my soul who only needs art. Maybe I want to prove something based on what will keep them proud. Maybe I am pushing myself too much beyond what my heart could actually hold. Maybe I am running behind what they call achievement from the outside. Maybe proving myself I could do it has been the only armor I have been holding tightly. Maybe I want to perform so well that I can't see anything beyond the line of what feels like my centre. Maybe I am slowly forgetting my centre. Maybe I am not truly living up to my silent callings. Maybe I am slowly losing it along the way. Yet against all these uncertainties and fears holding me back, I still keep hearing a voice calling out my soul to not hide what I have to say, to not stop asking what it wants to ask, to not stop writing about it, to not escape from what is asking me to confess, to not stop loving the one I am becoming even as I feel lost. Also, not to hate who I have already become on the way.

Writing has always been my way of silently listening to my soul, though tired, exhausted, and terrified about life. It has always been like a hand reaching out to free me from the nameless weight I carry. And this post is not a pessimistic outlook of who I'd been or who I am now. Maybe I don't have it all explained, but somewhere down the years, I know I have lived though I have unlived. I have tried. And believed. And believed. And kept believing. There is no end to what I can still hope for. I will keep moving on with this belief, for I know there is something in me that won't let my soul die while I am still all alive. There is art. There is life. And I see them both.

Maybe growing up is messy. Trying to understand life is messy. Getting to know what we really want for our souls is messy, but the truth is, we don't need to have it all figured out right away. And we don’t need to be fully driven always. Or even fully understood because it’s here in this unknown trajectory, we tend to grow stronger and even more closer to our real belonging.

You are not lost. And your main character energy is not entirely gone. It has been just blocked by various other forces denying your sound liberation. It has been hidden under what you don’t always say aloud. And I am here to remind you that you are never late for your deepest yearnings. Maybe we are all getting nearer to where we truly belong. Fear is helping us. The inevitable forces at play are guiding us. We are not lost. We are not controlled. We are just slowly returning home. We are not done yet. We are just rooting to get stronger, not allowing anything to break us down. Underneath all this exhaustion to be fully seen for who we honestly ache to be, I see us there already, slowly resting with the choices made, intuitively leaning on, not having to prove anything to anyone to feel loved or appreciated.

This was a post started so many weeks earlier. I even got that exam over and forgot this was in the drafts section for a long time. Grateful that I was able to complete it, though it'd felt like a complete mess every time when I kept revising it. But it is always better late than never. The reason why I take more time to post might lurk in the vulnerability I am trying to conceal. I always end up revealing too much chaos and confusion. But that doesn't stop me. I find peace and there is nothing so much relieving as pressing this publish button here after what felt like being so unheard for a long time. I am deeply humbled if you have made it so far though I'd went on like bewailing too much. But there is always hope at the end of the tunnel. And I love you so much.

With Peace,

Revathi Ganesh