No new beginnings

Had an insight just now, thanks to a novel I just finished. 

For as long as I remember, I’ve wanted to start a new life as a completely different person.  I always had the notion that all the things that were wrong with my life had to be swept away by transforming myself, transforming my life so radically as to be unrecognisable.  I’ve tried it several times.  Moved interstate, changed my name, my religion, my appearance.  Several times. 

I’d been unwilling to buy furniture for my flat because I still dreamt of moving to Byron.  And changing my name again, and my livelihood, and my friends.  Perhaps those massive shifts are a positive thing.  But I realised that it’s not so much a new creation as the latest instalment in an ongoing body of work.  Nothing comes from nowhere.  I’m sure this all sounds rather trite and obvious; perhaps there’s a deeper truth I’m trying to express, unless I’ve simply been rather deluded up to this point. 

I guess I’d been dreaming of escaping the various ruts I’d been stuck in.  Escaping from the unpopular, plain little girl I was.  I dreamed of sweeping into a school reunion like a movie star, with a movie star life and movie star hair.  I escaped from a pointless course of study and stifling, overbearing, abusive parents.  I thought I’d soon have a settled life with a career, a husband and a house, and a community of like-minded spiritual seekers.  None of it quite worked, and I escaped to try to find a mainstream identity, with a mainstream job and a mainstream income.  That didn’t work out either.  I hoped desperately for an opportunity to move to Byron and find like-minded folk and a relaxed, people-filled life.  Perhaps it wouldn’t have worked either. 

Perhaps it’s time to look at what has remained constant.  I never succeeded in becoming the movie star or the selfless volunteer, the settled hippie, the career woman or even the self-healing hermit.  The plain and friendless little girl is still there.  I guess it’s time I stopped running from my past.