The Space Between Versions of Me

Sometimes growth looks like stillness. Sometimes it feels like loss.

Some awakenings arrive quietly — not through grand shifts, but in ordinary moments. A gym chair. A familiar morning. A room full of people half-present on their screens. Here, in the smallest spaces, we start to hear ourselves again.

---

I’m sitting somewhere different today, in the gym. My youngest is booked into Movie Club, so she gets to watch a film with her friends, and I get 120 minutes to myself. Sitting here, looking around, every adult is on their phone, and I’m not judging. I live most of my day through mine. Only this morning, I was distracted by it, and we were almost late getting here.

I’m not sitting here from a place of superiority at all; I’m not immune to the quiet magnetism of that glowing screen - the way it promises connection while stealing presence. But as I sit here reflecting, I can’t help but notice - and I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately - that half the world seems to be asleep, and the other half is somewhere in between, in their own version of what I’m experiencing: what feels like an awakening.

Yesterday, I met my oldest friends. It felt like we were saying words that everyone understood, yet we may as well have been speaking different languages. We see the world differently now. They have no idea why I want to find the root cause of every problem or pattern, why I need to find meaning in everything, or why I search for myself on these pages, in my journal.

They didn’t say this exactly; I felt it gently between their questions. I sensed, perhaps, an energy of pity - that to need to journal every day is a kind of crutch, something that stops me from living. They weren’t being unkind; they didn’t understand. And I get it. Why do I put so much pressure on myself — all this soul-searching? Can’t I just live? Isn’t it hard work? But that’s the whole point - that when I was living their version of life, I simply wasn’t living. And that, to me, felt like hard work.

In that life, I was left wondering: Is this it? Am I supposed to be happy? Everyone else seems to be happy, but why do I want more? Is this what life is about? I’m not saying I don’t ask myself questions like these anymore - of course I do. I’m an inquisitive, introspective person. But, now I find the answers here, on these pages.

Not other people’s answers - mine. I can’t find my path to happiness by picking up my phone and asking someone else what they think I should do. Yet I did that for years. I relied on this collective decision-making, and it left me doing things - living a life; a life that I didn’t value. That left me resentful, not because of others, but because I didn’t trust my own judgment.

Back then, I survived on autopilot — ticking boxes, doing what looked right. But now, I’m learning to live awake, to meet life with curiosity instead of compliance.

I looked to others as mirrors for what was right, but they could only reflect their own fears and desires back to me. My reflection became distorted, blurred by too many borrowed views, until I finally turned inward and saw myself clearly.

Now, though, I have permanently changed from the person other people remember — and that’s hard for me, and for them. There’s a space in my personal life where the person I once was is no more, and the person I’m becoming is still emerging. It’s taken time to trust that clarity - to believe that my own knowing could be enough.

In my personal life, this can feel lonely, but never without purpose. For the first time, I feel fully myself — like roots growing quietly underground, doing their work in darkness before anything blooms. Growth rarely looks like progress while it’s happening.

But professionally, it feels like something luminous has unfolded, something magical has happened - the pieces of me that once felt scattered now fit together with ease, as though I’ve found the missing jigsaw pieces, or like sunlight finally finding its way through the cracks. This is what integration feels like: intellect meets intuition, reason finds its reflection in truth.

My professional identity — what was once only the technical and intellectual part of me - now fits with the philosophical, spiritual, and introspective parts of me. By bringing all of these parts together, I can truly help people — not by telling them or educating them, but by walking them through their thoughts and feelings, guiding them to their own version of this place — where I am, where I’ve arrived.

And that, that sense of completeness, of fulfilment, is enough. Because all we are ever really searching for is enough — enough compassion to feel comfortable in ourselves, enough purpose to keep moving, and enough love to feel whole.

If these words sound like your thoughts, perhaps we’re both in this middle place together — quietly finding ourselves again. I’d love to hear from you.

Love, Victoria xx