Just Being Cassie

I have been thinking a lot lately about how strange it is to finally find oneself living inside the very things you once prayed for.

I mean, not everything, obviously. There are still so many things I want, so many parts of my life that I am still working towards, waiting for, believing in.

But when I look around properly, I realise that a lot of what fills my days now used to exist only in my head. All the ideas I talked about, the things I wrote down, businesses that existed only in my imagination and rooms I wanted so badly to create.

There was a certain version of myself I kept saying I was becoming. I remember sharing some of that with you guys. And somehow, somewhere along the way, things started moving really quickly. Maybe even quicker than I expected.

I prayed for more. More creativity, more opportunities, more direction and a whole lot more clarity about what I was supposed to be doing with my life.

And I got it.

Which is actually funny because no one really talks about the part where the answer to your prayer starts demanding things from you. Things like discipline, energy, money, patience, courage, decision-making and consistency, even when you do not feel inspired.

There are days now when I wake up and there are already ten things waiting for me before I have even fully opened my eyes.

A tailor needs an answer, someone is waiting for a payment, something needs to be approved, there is a client to respond to. A space I am designing, a piece of furniture that has not come out the way I imagined, I have content sitting on my camera that needs to be edited, a collection living in my head that I need to somehow turn into actual clothes. A business decision I cannot keep postponing because, unfortunately, I am the person who has to make the decision.

And somewhere in between all of that, I’m also supposed to be a person, eat, sleep, exercise, see my friends, answer messages, take care of myself, have a life, write. Writing that last word actually made me laugh out loud because clearly I have not been doing much of that.

I think that is partly why I disappeared from here. Life became very loud, but not necessarily in a bad way. Just full.

I used to have so much room to sit with my thoughts, romanticise them a little, maybe not so little, dissect whatever I was feeling and turn it into an article. Lately, however, I have barely had time to understand what I am feeling before something else needs my attention. And the interesting thing is, this is the life I wanted.

That is the part I keep reminding myself over and over. I wanted to build. I wanted my ideas to become real things. I wanted to take fashion more seriously. I wanted to walk into beautiful spaces and know that I could create them too. I wanted to learn interior design and own my very own design studio. I wanted people to trust my eye. I wanted to be the woman with several creative things happening at once.

I wanted the full calendar, the projects, the responsibilities, the feeling that my life was moving somewhere.

I asked God for expansion. And I think sometimes we imagine expansion as this very pretty thing.

Like your life just gets bigger and shinier and suddenly you are standing in the middle of all your answered prayers looking fabulous and well-rested. Meanwhile, expansion is actually quite inconvenient. It stretches your capacity and exposes where you are disorganised. It shows you what you still need to learn and It makes you confront the habits that were fine when your life was smaller but absolutely cannot come with you into the life you are trying to build. It literally forces you to grow up in places you did not realise you were still avoiding.

There have been moments in which I have caught myself feeling overwhelmed and immediately felt guilty afterwards. Because how dare I complain about something I begged for? How can I say I am tired when I remember how badly I wanted momentum?

But I am slowly learning that gratitude and exhaustion can exist in the same body. I can be incredibly grateful and still need rest. I can love what I am building and still feel scared by the size of it sometimes. I can know that I am exactly where I am supposed to be and still have days where I want everyone to stop calling me for five minutes.

Both can be true. And maybe that is one of the biggest things adulthood keeps teaching me. That two things can be true at once. I can be proud of myself and know I still need to do better. I can be living an answered prayer and still be figuring out how to carry it.

I can be becoming the woman I always imagined and still have moments where I do not feel like her at all. Because the woman I imagined in my head was always very polished and put together. She had the businesses, the beautiful spaces, the clothes, the meetings, the confidence, and the lifestyle.

What I did not imagine were the hundreds of tiny decisions she had to make to maintain all of it. I did not imagine how often she would have to choose discipline over mood or how many mistakes she would make. How often she would second-guess herself and how many times something she paid for would go wrong.

I did not imagine how many people she would have to manage or the many uncomfortable conversations she would have to have. And I clearly never imagined the many nights she would sit there thinking, okay… what exactly have I gotten myself into?

All that was never on the vision board. But maybe it should have been. Because I think this is the real becoming. Not just buying the things or announcing the businesses or taking the pretty photographs when everything is finally finished. I think it is who you become while trying to hold everything together before anybody can even see the finished version.

I have had moments lately where I looked around and simply thought, wow. This is actually happening. And not in some dramatic movie moment, but while I am doing something completely ordinary. While standing in my office, looking at fabric, talking to a client, choosing materials, walking through a space and mentally rearranging everything in it, and even opening my laptop and seeing all the different parts of my life sitting in separate folders. And for a second I remember the version of me who only had the idea and how excited she would be to see all these unfolding, how slightly terrified she would also be for me. But, you know, mostly excited.

So I am trying not to rush through this season just because it is demanding. I do not want to spend so much time trying to get to the next level that I fail to notice that this level was once the next level. That sentence has been really sitting with me. This level was once the next level. There was actually a time when I would have given anything to feel this creatively alive. To have this much to build, people waiting for something I created, to be learning new things again and to feel like my life had direction.

And now that I am here, I want to learn how to hold it properly, not perfectly, just properly. I want better systems, even better boundaries and better discipline. I want to stop treating rest like something I have to earn after almost running myself into the ground. I want to be able to create without constantly feeling like I am behind. I want to enjoy my own life while I am building it. I want to remember that becoming successful does not require becoming permanently stressed. Most of all, I think I want to grow into my answered prayers instead of constantly asking God for the next thing.

I think that maybe this season is not asking me to manifest harder. Maybe it is asking me to become more capable of holding what has already arrived. And that, I must say is a very different kind of prayer. Lately mine sounds a little less like, “God, give me more” and a lot more like, “God, give me the wisdom, discipline and capacity to take care of what you have already given me.”

I kind of realised that the life I asked for is here, but in pieces. Very much unfinished and slightly chaotic in some corners. But it is here and apparently, she needs more from me now.

So I am becoming more too.

Cassie 🌸✨