When you are present but still feel like you are somewhere else
She packed for three people, managed ten employees like children she didn’t love, and somewhere around September stopped recognising herself in the mirror. What remained was someone going through every motion while waiting for the person she used to be to come back.
Her father had died unexpectedly. That explained the September part. What it didn’t explain was the feeling that she’d been half-present for months before that, moving through her days like someone rehearsing for a life that would start later. The family holiday was meant to fix something. Forty years old, everyone she loved gathered in one place, and she couldn’t shake the sense that she was performing celebration while the actual her sat somewhere else, watching.
The eight-year-old had a meltdown about the pool. She and her husband tag-teamed for thirty minutes: sun cream, swimming trunks, the logistics of keeping a ginger child alive in Spain. When her mother finally took over, she felt relief and then immediately guilt about the relief. Ten minutes to herself felt like a prize she hadn’t earned.
That night at the buffet, surrounded by people who would show up for her no matter what, she could name her luck clearly. And still the feeling sat there underneath: that she was somewhere else, that the real thing was always just about to begin.
We do this. We tell ourselves we’re waiting for the right moment — after the crisis passes, after the trip, after we’ve rested. What we don’t say out loud is that waiting can become the thing we’re doing instead of living.
She wasn’t wasting her life. She was raising a child, running a business, holding her family together through grief. But none of that changes the feeling. We can be objectively present and still experience our own lives like we’re standing just outside them, waiting for permission to step back in.
The early-morning argument about a Frappuccino without coffee, the clenched teeth, the ten minutes it took to fix — that wasn’t about caffeine. It was about needing something to land right when nothing had felt right in months. We know that feeling. We also know it doesn’t get solved by finally getting the order right.
Sometimes the life we’re waiting for is the one we’re already in. We’ve just been holding our breath so long we forgot we’re allowed to exhale here, in this exact spot, without anything changing first.
The question isn’t what we’re waiting for. It’s: what if this is it, and we’re allowed to be here anyway?
Sit with:
What are we telling ourselves will feel different once something else happens first?
When was the last time we felt fully present in our own lives, not performing them or waiting through them?
What would it mean to stop rehearsing and just be here?