I just feel so tired of trying to categorize myself. I don't know if this need is truly mine, or if I've absorbed other people's projections so deeply that I've built an entire neural pathway around belonging to a category. People always say, "Stop caring what people think." I even say it myself. But if I'm completely honest, that's not entirely true. I'm an observer, and I never lie to myself. I'm as honest with myself as God is with me. And yet, I still catch myself caring in certain situations. Maybe it comes from the way I was raised. Maybe from the experiences I've lived through.
I've always been an academic girl. I loved learning. I still do. I love curiosity. I love random old stories from forgotten villages. For example, in my father's village there's a story about a girl who drank water from the river. Her belly started growing, and people believed she gave birth to a snake because, apparently, she swallowed a tiny snake while drinking from the river. Do I believe that story? That's not the point. Those stories fascinate me. Sometimes I dream about traveling through every village in Kosovo and Albania just to hear the most random stories before they disappear. Not because they were written, but because they weren't. There's so much mysticism inside oral storytelling.
I'm fascinated by the different forms of consciousness that groups of people develop, because nothing is ever just you. Culture shapes you. Family shapes you. Language shapes you. Beliefs shape you.
I used to think I was very special. Unique. That God had placed my soul here for a very specific purpose. Don't get me wrong, I still feel like I'm living under God's spotlight, and I think you should feel that too, because we are. But I don't think my curiosity makes me unique anymore. I think it's deeply human. The deeper I dive into the unseen, the more I realize how many neural pathways we're constantly developing, how many beliefs we inherit before we ever question them. And yet there are still so many things the human mind cannot fully understand. It can feel them. Sometimes it can almost understand them, as if someone lets you taste the ice cream but never gives you the whole thing.
In different periods of my life I have very strong opinions, and I love that. It keeps me unattached to theories, concepts and identities. I can reshape them, re-feel them and dive even deeper. Do you know what's my favorite moment? When you think you finally know something, then you experience it again, rethink it, research it again, and suddenly you don't just know more, you understand it differently. That's a brain orgasm.
Anyway... sometimes I get tired of all this bullshit of trying to know myself. Most of that frustration comes from the expectations I have of myself. I know that, and yet I still can't help it. I'm very careful with what I write. If you write something, if you speak something, you bring it to life. That's how it feels to me. That's why it's hard even to brag about myself, because I'm hypervigilant with words.
Recently I realized I have hypervigilance. It didn't develop from fear. It developed from observation. Observation has been my strongest neural pathway since I can remember. I observe everything. Patterns, people, environments, the way someone chooses a word instead of another, the way groups of people build beliefs without realizing it. I think that's why I became obsessed with consciousness. Not because I wanted answers, but because I couldn't stop observing the questions.
Anyway, I'm still finding myself. Actually... I don't even think that's the right sentence anymore. I think the worst question you can ask yourself is, "Who am I?" Your subconscious takes that question seriously. It starts opening every possible door just to help you answer it. I asked it for years. I even wrote Who am I? over and over again. Every year I found a different answer. Every year life gave me a different perception. That's when I realized... maybe I was asking the wrong question.
I live art. I don't care if you categorize me as an artist or not. It's funny... I went to an artist residency and everyone kept introducing themselves as artists, talking about art and their practice. I wasn't even listening to what they were saying anymore. I was observing the consciousness behind the words. It was fascinating. You could almost feel how differently each person related to art. Some were creating from rebellion, some from pain, some from curiosity, some from love. I didn't feel the need to label any of them, because that's exactly what I've been trying to stop doing to myself.
I live art. No one can come and tell me whether I'm an artist or not. I don't care if you perform in a theatre twice a week, have exhibitions around the world or call yourself an artist every day. Have you ever turned your own life into research? Have you ever become a character just because your curiosity wanted to know what that version of you would feel like? I have. I'm not saying this to compete. Actually, I think competition is one of the least interesting things about art. What I'm trying to say is, don't let the world define your identity just because it only knows how to recognize titles, certificates and professions. There are so many ways of living something before naming it.
Art, for me, is a way of being. It's the unknown dancing with me. It's my mind translating thoughts into rhythm. Sometimes I literally hear my thoughts as poems before they become sentences. I don't create art because I want to become an artist. I create because that's the language my mind naturally speaks.
When I was a little girl... actually, I still am. My body just got older. Before this avatar had much experience, I believed in a way I still return to from time to time, just to recalibrate how pure my belief still is. During meditation I often go back to that little Vlera. It's crazy because she never changes. She's always strong. Always peaceful. Always smiling.
One time I was going through one of those days where nothing made sense. You know those days when you feel everything at once, when you stop believing people could ever understand you, and the only thing your body wants is sleep. I went into meditation wanting to tell little Vlera that darkness exists too. That the world isn't made only of light. Because she never believed in darkness. She was never scared. She always felt protected, as if she was surrounded by millions of angels. I even used to draw symbols when I was very young. I had no idea what they meant. Years later I understood them differently, but that's another story.
I found her. She looked at me while I was crying. She wasn't. She slowly held my hands, looked up at me with those big eyes full of love and said, "I know." Then she smiled and said, "I still choose the light." That's all she said. There's nothing more divine than a child who hasn't negotiated with the world yet.
She held my hand, pulled me closer to her, and we hugged. For a few seconds I couldn't tell who was comforting who. I felt eternity. Not time. Not thought. Just eternity. Then I asked her, "Where are you?" She smiled and said, "I'm in God's arms." I never saw God. I felt Him. I felt Him in the air. In the silence. In the calmness. It was a peace so complete that my body forgot time. Everything felt still. Everything felt alive at the same time. When I opened my eyes, I slowly looked at my hands, my legs, my body. I hugged myself so tightly and realized... I'm still that little girl. Not because I don't know darkness exists. But because, every time I meet it, I still choose the light.
And yet, people spend so much time doing shadow work, talking about darkness as if it's a place you fall into. I don't experience it that way anymore. Darkness is a perception. A state. A frequency. Not a creature waiting for you somewhere outside yourself. For a long time I was terrified of demons. Really terrified. Until I started asking myself what I actually believed a demon was. The deeper I went, the less I saw demons as beings and the more I understood them as frequencies. States of consciousness. Patterns of thought. Ways of perceiving reality. When those states meet human biology, inherited survival patterns and unprocessed trauma, they can create destruction. Not because a demon entered you, but because a state of consciousness became your reality.
I refuse to believe there's an external force controlling my inner world. I refuse that reality. Because the deeper I study consciousness, the more I realize that belief doesn't only shape behavior. It shapes perception. It shapes the reality you experience. Everything begins as consciousness before it becomes action.
That's why I became fascinated by witches. By folklore. By rituals. By religion. By collective beliefs. Not because I wanted to prove they were right or wrong, but because I wanted to understand what happens when thousands of people believe the same thing for generations. What kind of reality does that create? What kind of world does that build? If two hundred people truly believe something, they don't just share an idea. They begin sharing a reality. I think that's where the unseen begins. Not somewhere outside of us. Between us.
Dig deeper into what belief actually means. Just because you say you believe something doesn't mean you truly do. Belief isn't only a thought. It's a feeling. A pattern. Something shaped long before you were born. By your family. By your culture. By generations before you. That's the enigma of humanity for me. Watching one generation slowly transform the beliefs of another.