When the Music Is Off

What does it mean to hold so many contradictions at once? What does it mean when you’re questioning your moral compass at midnight on a work night while simultaneously judging everyone who doesn’t want the life you so desperately desire?

Lately, I’ve been spending a little more time with my shadow than I’d like. I’ve been easily agitated, judgmental, comparing myself to people.

Sometimes jealous. Sometimes angry. Sometimes I look at the people around me and wonder why they are the way they are, only to eventually turn the question back toward myself: Am I even a good person? Do I treat people well? Am I fair? Do I extend the same grace I expect people to give me? How often am I walking around with my own blinders on, completely unaware of the moments when I am the difficult person in someone else’s story?

I don’t know. Maybe that’s the uncomfortable part.

I was talking to a friend recently about desire. He mentioned an idea from Plato’s Symposium: that we desire what we lack, that wanting is born, at least in part, from not possessing the thing we want. I hope I paraphrased that well. If not, forgive me and I’m hopeful you still understand.

Anyway, I think Plato’s idea is true, at least in part. But I also remember being barefoot and half naked on the Bonnaroo farm with an overdrawn bank account and being, quite literally, in one of the happiest moments of my life. I had very little money, but I felt free.

So maybe desire isn’t always born from absence. Maybe sometimes it’s born from recognition. Maybe sometimes we ache for something because we’ve already met it. Because I know what freedom feels like, and I don’t think I’ll ever stop wanting it. It’s too deeply embedded in me: as an only child, a trailblazing Aquarius, a Black woman, a creative, a free thinker. There is an inquisitive little girl who still lives deeply inside me. She wants to know. She wants to experience. She wants to ask questions. She wants to be curious and enjoy. She wants to see what’s over there simply because she hasn’t seen it yet.

Maybe that’s why I sometimes struggle to understand people who don’t seem to want the same things. And maybe that’s also where I have to check myself. Someone else’s contentment isn’t an indictment of my desires. Their life doesn’t have to make sense to me. Mine just has to make sense to me.

Still, lately, life has felt different. Jealousy is especially strange for me because I’ve never considered myself a particularly jealous person. I’ve always known myself to be capable. I’ve had many of my wants and, thankfully, all of my needs. But recently, I’ve noticed things in myself that I don’t always like: my anger, my sadness, my responses, my possessiveness, my judgment, my comparisons. Instead of immediately deciding these feelings make me bad, I’m trying to become curious about them. What are they trying to tell me? I want to know them too.

The strange thing is, I think I’ve only recently become quiet enough to hear them. I’ve been craving stillness for so long, and now I’m finally giving myself some. I reconnected with an old friend and chose the longer path of self-discovery. For a while, the party was so loud I could only hear the Afrobeats and Amapiano. There were people and plans and multiple tequila shots, and somewhere underneath all of that was me. I just couldn’t hear her.

Now the music is off. The tequila shots have turned into tea, protein coffee and the occasional glass of full-bodied Cabernet Sauvignon. And apparently, in the quiet, I have a lot to say. Maybe this is what I wanted. Maybe this is what I was avoiding. Maybe both can be true.

I think this is a season for noticing, to listen and learn without immediately judging, to be slower to anger, to understand that every emotion doesn’t require an action, but perhaps every emotion deserves my curiosity. I can feel myself getting better at that. I’m not quite who I was. Sometimes now I say, Okay. I get quiet. I say, I understand. Meanwhile, another part of me is eating away at the fact that I didn’t let a hoe know.

And there she is. My shadow.

Maybe that’s ego. Maybe that’s youth. Maybe that’s simply being human. Maybe maturity isn’t reaching some enlightened state where nothing bothers me anymore. Maybe it’s feeling the irritation, hearing the perfect response form in my head, knowing I could say it and deciding whether saying it would actually serve me. I’m still working on that part because sometimes I wish the bothersome feeling would disappear just because I chose not to act on it. It doesn’t. Sometimes I do the mature thing and remain annoyed anyway. Sometimes I extend grace while a quieter part of me insists the person didn’t deserve it.

Sometimes I love people and don’t particularly like them. Sometimes I am grateful for my life and deeply dissatisfied with parts of it. Sometimes I know exactly who I am and question everything about myself before midnight. There are so many contradictions living inside one person. Maybe that’s what I’ve been hearing in the quiet.

I want a life that feels good on the inside. I want to be surrounded by good people, doing work I love. I want to write. I want to travel. I want to take good care of my dad. I want ethical luxury—beautiful things without an ugly life attached to them. I want freedom.

I used to think I wanted fame and notoriety. I don’t know anymore. The spotlight can be cruel, but I do want people to read my words. I want something that once lived privately inside of me to reach another person and make them stop for a second. To feel something. To recognize themselves. Maybe I don’t need everyone to know my name. Maybe I just want the right people to know my words.

And perhaps that is another thing the quiet is teaching me: self-discovery isn’t always discovering beautiful things about yourself. Sometimes you meet your jealousy, your ego, your judgment, your anger, your contradictions. Sometimes you meet the woman who wants to extend grace and the woman who desperately wants to let a hoe know. They are sitting at the same table.

Maybe becoming isn’t deciding which one is really me. Maybe they’re both me. Maybe all of it is. The little girl who wants to see everything. The woman who wants freedom. The daughter who wants to take care of her father. The writer who wants her words to matter. The ego that wants to be right. The shadow that occasionally has some shit to say. The person trying, imperfectly, to become softer without becoming smaller.

I don’t know that I’ve figured out what all of these parts are trying to tell me yet. But for the first time in a while, the music is low enough for me to hear them. So I think I’ll listen.

What a blessing it is to be seen, loved and known for all the right reasons. Maybe the first person I have to learn to see, love and know that way is myself.