I always thought I was good with change. In fact, I thought I thrived under change. I would be wanting a new thing at work and just do different projects all the time. But in wanting to hop into different jobs was not actually me enjoying change, it was me wanting to have something stable, something I could control. The irony. Yet so subtle.
I was compelled to look at some old WhatsApp photos in my chat with my sister. I sent her lots of photos, sometimes screenshots of conversations and emails I’d write. Sometimes photos of flowers and clothes. Just sister things I guess. There was an email I sent to someone at work and oh my god I thought I was so diplomatic and looking back, yeh, I could have been less bitchy and more collaborative. But I really thought I was so good at handling conflict. But I wasn’t, now that I look back. I look back at a parcel pic I took for my sister. It was a coat I ordered from matches fashion. This shop went bust during the pandemic. It no longer exists. How times change. I read some convos I had with a bumble date once - total yikes. Would not respond like that anymore. Things change. Things do change. The only constant in life is change.
And it dawned on me that I resist change. I’m nostalgic because I want things to be the way they used to be. I cling on to the past because I don’t believe in a better future. I resist change so much that I feel like I’m in the past whilst everyone’s moving ahead. I sit in the present, thinking how I can have what I had in the past. Only then it dawned on me that I resist change so much. I learned change management at work and thought yeh big deal, change at work is easy. Ha! So funny that it turns out that the biggest resistor of change in my life is myself. I am resisting change so much. I feel thrown at how my sisters life has changed now she has two kids. Our relationship had changed and I feel uncomfortable with it. It’s ever evolving. Her priority is her kids now and of course, it will always be that way. And I’m just simply not in the same phase of life as she is and I can no longer relate with her very much. She does a lot of Mum things, whilst I’m doing the cool Aunt things - that type of dynamic. And I no longer feel as close as I was with her. She’s always busy and I will never understand - cause I’m not a mum right now. Home life circumstances changed too. All my grandparents who were ALL alive before the pandemic are now all dead. My tenants are moving after 9 years too. I thought they’d stay for a long time. Things are changing. So much. I’m fine with work changing but I realise I struggle when life changes. Like the car has broken down now. And that seemed to have triggered me. I want control so I control it via my work - it feels like the only way I can feel stable and I thought jumping jobs meant that i am dynamic in change but it was control masqueraded as change.
I always thought that I could accept the change of him not being in my life and the truth is I couldn’t. I just feel so sad about how the 2017 version of me would have never saw it coming. Maybe I am mourning what it was between us. And I hold on to it because it really was something beautiful. And it meant something to me. But it looks like Katie needs to stop resisting what is and just find a way to accept, yes, he’s gone! That’s just the way it is right now, he’s gone for good. How do I bless it for what it was and be ok with my sadness that it’s really gone?
Oh fuck me. what a realisation.