Vachon Imagined

She was so certain she would find herself in agreement with them, but the deeper she entered the conclaves of understanding, the more she encountered confusion disguised as wisdom, disagreement disguised as individuality, haughtiness disguised as consciousness, separation disguised as virtue.

The spiritual groups carried it.
The “non-racist” groups carried it.
The ones fighting endlessly for freedom while never recognizing the incomprehensible freedom already moving through them — the freedom to breathe, to move, to speak, to exist at all.

And slowly she understood: this constant need for agreement was not feeding life. It was feeding ego.

Because life itself does not require feeding. It is already whole. Already moving. Already becoming with or without permission from human thought. It does not need followers. It does not need ideology. It does not even need understanding.

Only humans do.

To find life required silence. To become part of it required isolation — a stripping away so complete it felt like death at first. The slow dismantling of the self until she could finally be rebuilt into something less performative, less certain, less desperate to belong.

Time was not hers.
Destiny was not hers.
Even the self she defended so fiercely did not entirely belong to her.

She was only borrowing all of it.

Borrowing a body.
Borrowing a name.
Borrowing consciousness for the briefest flicker between two darknesses.

And what a miracle that was.

To touch life at all.
To use it for pleasure, for creation, for love, for grief.
To shape meaning from something that never asked to be owned in the first place.

How astonishing that we were ever given the chance to hold it, even temporarily, in our trembling hands.