The Midnight Caller: When Your Soul Refuses the Square Shape of Normal

For those who've built the life they were supposed to want and found it hollow...

For those who've reached the summit only to discover it wasn't their mountain to climb...

For those who feel the walls of conclusion closing in, rising so slowly you hardly notice until one day you look up and can't see over the top anymore...

This is for you.

The Whisper That Won't Let You Rest

There's a particular kind of unraveling that happens to those who've followed all the rules, checked all the boxes, and built lives that look perfect on paper. It's not a dramatic breakdown, but more like a quiet desperation, an unidentified despair that grows beneath the surface while you smile and nod and keep the machine running.

You tell yourself this is what adulting looks like; this is what we do here, you know. Steady jobs with paychecks, and insurance, and stuff. Walking paths that have been well-tread.

But something in you refuses to be domesticated. Something wild keeps knocking, keeps whispering, keeps making you question whether the solid walls you've built are real.

The system tells you this voice is the problem and instructs you to silence it with more achievement, more acquisition, more distraction. It convinces that if you could just get better at forcing yourself into the square shape of normal, you'd finally be happy.

But what if that voice is actually your salvation?

When "Normal" Becomes a Cage

The world is masterful at convincing us that safety lies in conformity, in building lives that look like everyone else's. The blueprint is clear: education, career, relationship, house, retirement; each step promising fulfillment, each achievement promised to bring you closer to some mythical state of arrival.

Yet those who've reached the destination often discover a devastating truth: the map was leading to someone else's treasure.

When you build a life based on external validation rather than internal knowing, you're constructing a cage. It might be a beautiful cage with golden bars and comfortable furnishings, but it's still a cage. And the part of you that refuses domestication will never stop trying to break free.

That's when the midnight caller arrives.

The Midnight Caller

Many moons ago, in a moment of profound reckoning, I wrote:

I do my best to cozy down into a 'normal' life situation...
Ya know, with love and cookies, and consistent bedtimes.
Date nights and planning.
Steady jobs with paychecks and insurance and stuff.
Walking paths that have been well tread.
That's what we do here you know.

The walls of conclusion start small, building so slowly I hardly notice until one day I look up and I can't see over the top anymore. This freaks me out a little. But on paper it all looks so perfect, so I continue on.

Steady as she goes.

Cutting off every ounce of awareness to my internal knowing. Sinking ever further into unidentified despair until finally I forcefully shake free, forever changing the shaken.
And find myself right back where I started once again. All heart-achey and worn. Seriously wondering if I possess the strength to do this. Feigning resistance to the lure provided by safety of the familiar, the payment for which is always backwards traveling.

This mission before me just won't seem to go away. Who signed me up for this evolutionary path anyways? Was it me? Why do I destroy everything in my life for the sake of it? Maybe that which I destroy is not actually real. Just appearing, oh so convincingly solid.

No matter how many times I turn it away, it returns in the night to knock on my door. I don't want to hear what it has to say but, out of the shear lateness of hour and weariness of my soul, I listen this time.

"Come with me", it says. "I know it's dark out and you're scared, but trust me. When the light of day dawns you will see clearly and understand. The sun will shine more brilliantly than you have ever known. And for your courage, you will be rewarded with great joys and treasures and loves."

The resignation to manipulate my trapezoid self into the square shape of normal is fading fast. It has been a long and exhausting road. I fall into the arms of this midnight caller and cry. Unidentifiable as either tears of sorrow or joy or relief. Makes no difference really. The gift I am given in this moment is an unequivocal understanding that this is my only option. And that everything will be different. But incredible.

That midnight caller? It's the voice of your undomesticated self; the wisdom that lives in your bones. It's the part of you that remembers what matters beneath all the noise and conditioning, and it never stops knocking, no matter how many times you pretend not to hear.

The Cost of Ignoring the Call

When we cut ourselves off from our internal knowing, we pay a steep price. The payment might look like:

• Achievement that feels hollow
• Success that doesn't satisfy
• Relationships where you're performing rather than being
• Work that drains rather than nourishes
• A constant sense of something essential missing
• Nagging questions about whether this is all there is

We become experts at manufacturing joy; displaying the right emotions at the right times, posting the right moments, saying the right things, while a quiet desperation grows beneath our smiles.

This isn't just personal suffering. It's a collective wound inflicted by a system that profits from our disconnection from what matters most.

The Courage to Answer

What happens when you finally listen? When you fall into the arms of that midnight caller and surrender to the understanding that following your internal compass isn't just an option, it's your only option?

Everything changes.

Not because circumstances magically transform overnight, but because you begin to see with different eyes. You recognize that "that which I destroy is not actually real. Just appearing, oh so convincingly solid."

The structures, identities, and achievements you thought defined you – they reveal themselves as merely constructs built from false conclusions. The permission and approval you've been waiting for are recognized as irrelevant.

And in that raw, disorienting space of not-knowing, something incredible begins to emerge... your authentic life, aligned with what matters most to you. Not the life you were sold, but the one your soul came here to live.

For the Quietly Disillusioned

If these words land somewhere beneath your ribs, if you recognize yourself in this struggle between the life you've built and the life that's calling you, I want you to know you're not alone. You're not crazy for questioning what everyone else seems to accept without hesitation.

That midnight caller knocking at your door isn't there to destroy you. it's there to save you from a life half-lived, from the slow suffering of betraying your own knowing for the sake of perpetuating the status quo.

Listen to it. Even if what it asks of you seems impossible, unreasonable, or too risky.

Because the greatest risk isn't failing at something that matters to you, the greatest risk is succeeding at something that doesn't, and failing to truly live.

The wild in me recognizes the wild in you, even when it's been sleeping for a long time.

It's never too late to remember.
Chandra Nicole