On Blooming

Last night, right before falling asleep, I did something I occasionally do when I’m feeling a little curious about what the night might bring.

I sort of… check in upstairs. Not in a dramatic ritual way. More like a quiet internal message before drifting off: “Alright, higher self. If you’ve got anything interesting tonight, I’m open. Cool visions welcome. Cozy dreams appreciated.”

Usually when I do that, I end up somewhere new. A place I’ve never been in waking life but somehow recognize later when I actually go there. My dreams like to play travel agent sometimes. So naturally, I was expecting some kind of mysterious new landscape.

Instead, I got… a massage therapist from another dimension. In the dream, this strange-looking man appeared. The kind of person who gives off the vibe that he knows things without asking questions.

He walked right up to me and started working on my shoulders and neck. No small talk. Straight to business. And somehow he knew exactly where the pain was sitting.

The moment his hands pressed into those spots, I could feel it leaving. Not just the physical tension, but the emotional stuff too: the old weight that somehow lives in the body long after the original moment has passed.

It was so real I collapsed to my knees in the dream and started crying. Not sad crying. That kind of crying that happens when something heavy finally leaves your system and your body goes, “Oh… that’s what relief feels like.”

I remember saying thank you over and over again while the pain drained out. Then I woke up.

And the first thing I noticed was how light my body felt. Not magically healed, my heart still feels tender, and tight, but lighter. Like something important had shifted a few millimeters in the right direction.

Which makes sense, because I’m currently in what I can only describe as a heart opening phase.

The next couple of weeks are very clearly scheduled for hermit mode. Quiet processing. Emotional housekeeping. Letting things move through the system without rushing them.

My dreams tend to work like that. First I see it there. Then I feel it there. Then eventually waking life catches up. Sometimes the translation is immediate. Sometimes it takes months. Occasionally years. My subconscious clearly operates on its own timeline.

But something else happened this weekend that made me smile. I caught my reflection in the mirror and noticed my eyes looked… different. They looked like they did in 2024. Big. Soft. Sparkly. Open.

For a while that version of me had disappeared. The walls around my heart went up for a reason. Self-protection. When you feel things deeply, sometimes the only way to survive certain seasons is to close the gates for a while.

If I had opened everything all at once back then, I probably would have broken. So the system did what it needed to do. It processed things slowly. Carefully. One layer at a time.

And now those walls are starting to come down again. That nurturing part of me, the one I actually loved the most about myself, is quietly coming back online.

Not because I forced it. Because the timing is finally right.

Another thing I’ve noticed lately is a strange sense of peace settling in about my roots.

The places I’ve lived. The cultures that didn’t shape me, but had me find what I actually loved. The country where I spent eighteen years. The one where I spent nine and a half. The music, the food, the people, the little pieces of identity that come from growing up between worlds.

Even two cultures I spent a good portion of my life actively disliking, those are softening now too, thanks to a dream that shifted my perspective in ways I didn’t expect.

Healing has a funny way of expanding the heart in directions you once swore you’d never go. And it always takes time. Patience. Kind people around you, especially if you’ve been through enough alone. People who see you clearly and treat you with gentleness. People who understand your past without using it against you.

When that kind of environment exists, something beautiful happens. You start blooming again.

Not because you’re chasing something. Not because you’re trying to prove anything. Simply because you’re ready.

And I suppose that’s the quiet truth underneath all of it: Before anything can bloom… the roots have to feel safe in the soil first.