Sometimes I feel a big disconnect between who I am in my head and what my life is actually in the real world. I have always had this tendency to live a half-dreamed life that would in places intersect with my real world, which made it almost plausible.

I’m still surprised how this habit persisted for so long in my life. I would have though I’d be over this after adolescence, but no, never grew out of it.  And that is the big problem: there are so many things I thought would be different by now and they are not. Like I thought I would be so much wiser and such a grown up, and when I am by myself, without the responsibility of the children, I am just the same Lori of fifteen years ago. Not much seems to have changed. Not in my head. Despite all that white hair. Is that the cruelest of realities or what? We never actually grow up inside.

This starts to weigh even heavier when I perceive other people around me as much more mature and accomplished than I am. My own failure to accomplish my little dreams takes end-of-world proportions. Clearly, we can’t compare lives with other people (especially online-lived lives) but it is not about the other people; it is always about myself. They are just reminders of whom I have not become in this very long time that has already passed in my life.

Getting used to the idea that living a small life is perfectly fine and even quite beautiful can be a big adjustment. It’s a lovely concept though that I’m quite attracted to, because I often see that the big dreams we people have are leading this humanity on an undesirable path of destruction. It shouldn’t be so hard to control our wishes and our dreams and to reevaluate what we hold dear. But it is, isn’t it? Because reality is oppressing. And that’s why we escape into dreaming. And that’s how we start all over again.