Quantum Purgatory

I've been reading Ageless Body, Timeless Mind by Deepak Chopra. It's about the quantum alternative to growing old. Quantum theory has always intrigued me, and this book has been no exception to that.

This book has been a tough read. The language is so complex and philosophical. To understand Chopra, I had to learn more about quantum mechanics first. And in doing so, I discovered the concept of quantum leaping. These immediate, radical shifts of energy. No gradual transition. You’re sitting in one place and then before you know it, you’re somewhere else, in different state entirely.

I think I quantum leaped on trail.

There was a stretch in Northern California where I started to slow down. Not my feet, but in my mind. I was losing hope. The weight of who I had been, what I had tolerated, why I had started this whole thing in the first place… it was all dragging behind me like the cans behind a married couple driving away to their honeymoon. Except I was carrying boulders and they were tied to me with string as fine as hair. My original why was no longer beside me. And the only way to keep going, was to change everything about where I was mentally. My why. My purpose. My drive. The reason I wanted to make it to Canada. I had to let it all go and become someone else. Someone who could finish.

And then I did finish. And then I went home.

Except home was different. I wasn't in the house I slept in last. I was back under my parents roof. And I wasn’t in my childhood bedroom, I was in the guest bedroom. I had a new job with real weight on my shoulders and an image to maintain, not just showing up and clocking in. Since being home I’ve reconnected with family, new friends, held onto constant ones, had crushes, even went on dates.

I've set goals: buy a house, get land, go back to college, nail my position at work, write blogs, be a good friend, be an even better daughter, navigate heartbreak, journal, fix my sleep schedule, go to the gym, eat right, meditate, get a tan, do my laundry. I am trying to be and do it all. In hindsight, I am privileged to have these goals. I could be in a very different situation.

But underneath all of it, is this quiet isolation. Quieter, somehow, than anything I felt while standing alone in the middle of a forest. Because at least out there, the silence made sense. Out here, I'm surrounded by noise. By people who love me and yet, I still feel like no one truly knows what happened to me out there. No one ever really will. That is beautiful and also deeply weird to hold at the same time. People have moved on from the trip I took because I'm not on it anymore. But I'm still there. And even though that version of me has died, I miss her. I still reach for her sometimes.

This is quantum purgatory.

Someone put it perfectly online once: when someone asks how you're doing but you don't know how to explain that a version of you died and the next version hasn't fully been birthed yet, so you just say you're chillin. That's it. That's exactly it.

In quantum physics, superposition is the idea that a particle exists in all possible states simultaneously, until it's observed. Until something forces it to land. I think that's where I am. I am all of my possible selves at once, but none of them have fully collapsed into one yet. I am the girl who finished the PCT, and the girl who doesn't even know what that means anymore. I am reaching for everything and also wondering why I'm even so attached to feeling accomplished. I am proud, I am lost, and I am both of those things at the exact same time.

I feel like I am in the lobby outside the doctor's office. I've checked in. I'm waiting to be called back. I don't know what they're about to tell me, but I know something is coming. Something big, or else I wouldn’t be here right? Right?…

Quantum leaping isn't slow. It's a sudden shift from one energy state to another with nothing in between. No slow climb. Just one decision that changes everything, and then boom. Everything is different.

I've leaped before. I know what it feels like from the inside, that moment in NorCal when I had no choice but to change or simply stop walking. I changed. I kept going, and I made it to Canada.

So I'm not afraid of the leap. I'm just in the lobby. Pouring out my soul. Waiting for my name to be called as I continue to read my book.