Entre la vie

What am I afraid of?

Who am I?

Questions that linger in the air like smoke, shifting forms but never truly dispersing. I find myself thinking about what I am thinking about—this strange hall of mirrors where perception folds into itself. Who is perceiving me here? Is it my fractured self, the one I shape in solitude, or is it the world’s kaleidoscopic gaze? Perhaps it is neither. Perhaps the fear is not of being seen but of being frozen—caught mid-metamorphosis, suspended between what I was and what I am becoming.

But that’s not for today, or maybe it is, because everything ties into itself, doesn’t it? I’m writing without thought, yet with all of it, words spilling like water over stones, following paths I can’t yet name. I have been learning, or maybe unlearning, what it means to live. Living feels different now—not extraordinary or grand, but deliberate. A life stitched together in the small, intentional mundane.I’ve found myself in the mundane, not as a prisoner, but as a willing guest. The mundane that you choose, the daily rituals that you offer up as acts of reverence. The morning coffee brewed with measured hands. The quiet hours of solitude where you wrestle with yourself and come out softer, stronger. The way time stretches when you move with intention—fluid, forgiving, as if time itself wants to be known.

And in this choosing, this intentional living, there is a constant shedding—every day, a little death. A version of myself curls up at the edges, crumbles softly into yesterday. And yet, here I stand, breathing still. This, I think, is what growth really is: not the sharp, upward trajectory others glamorize, not the numbers or achievements carefully catalogued, but the quiet, unseen labor of showing up. It is tending the inner flame when no one is watching. It is finding what ignites you—what warms your chest, makes you feel alive—and choosing it over and over, until it becomes second nature.

So, tell me—who am I, if I am always becoming? A river that never stills, a thousand skins worn and discarded, each one leading to the next. And maybe that’s where the fear begins: the terror of being seen in the in-between. To be perceived is to be defined, and how do you define someone whose very essence is change? Every new version of me is a tender skin—new, untested, as delicate as spring’s first bloom. I am still learning how to wear it, still growing into its shape. But I can feel it toughening, layer by layer, beneath the weight of each day lived with intention.

Life, I’ve learned, is practice. It is a quiet rehearsal for becoming, again and again, the most honest version of yourself. The more you live this way—aligned, aware—the less the shifting feels like loss. The more you trust the shedding, the more you see it for what it is: rebirth, renewal, a necessary offering to the next day. I know I’ll get there. We’ll get there. Slowly, steadily—like waves meeting the shore. Not because they must, but because it is in their nature to return.

And isn’t that what we are? Beings caught between movement and stillness, between the tides of who we were and who we are becoming. The intention, the practice, the shedding—it’s all the same hymn, the same whisper of life urging us forward. To show up. To choose. To embrace the ache of becoming, until it feels less like fear and more like freedom. Until the river of us flows so steadily that we no longer mind being seen. Because what they see is only a moment, and we—we are eternity in motion.

-Vie (19.Dec.2024, 222)