the problem with answered prayers is that you get used to them
a woman on tiktok told me that i already have everything i wanted two years ago. i don’t remember her name or what else she said, i only recall that one sentence, which followed me off the app and became irritatingley relevant.
i have been thinking a lot about what i don’t have yet, mainly a degree, having watched my peers graduate 2 years before i will. the idea of my graduation sits somewhere in my head looking official and slightly hostile. whenever i think about it for too long i become convinced that i will still be on that stage distracted and consumed by half-read books and documents called FINALfinal2. but the tiktok i saw made me look at my life from the perspective of myself two years ago.
at the time, i had just moved to london. living in a small house share and dreaming of my own apartment in north london. not just somewhere decent to live, either. i had added a roof terrace to the fantasy, as well as being walking distance to my uni. as though london landlords respond well to imagination.
i also wanted a retail job that paid well and came with the kind of benefits that would make living in london less expensive. i remember wanting my travel covered because TFL is one of the city’s most efficient bank breakers. i also visualised this dream job where every season i got free clothes as uniform, not because im somebody particularly interested in fashion, but because my rent at the time had consumed so much of my salary that my wardrobe was practically empty.
all my nice clothes i had sold on vinted to fund my nights out.
that last part felt unrealistic at the time, too specific and slightly unserious. which is exactly why it matters to me now. i wasn’t only asking for “financial stability” or “a better job” phrases so vague and almost so cliche that almost anything could be interpreted as a sign. i had imagined an oddly particular lifestyle, down to the transport and clothes, and ended up with both.
and, please, i’m not saying this to list my employment benefits or present my life as more glamorous than it is. free clothes eventually overflow my wardrobe and a travel allowance is still connected to the fact that i have to travel to work. the point is that something i once thought was an almost childish and idealistic request has become ordinary enough that i barely care anymore.
then there was the relationship. i didn’t want a boyfriend in the abstract, like a title i could hold up as evidence that somebody had chosen me. i wanted the smaller, almost boring intimacy of knowing another person well. in summer i would see couples folded into each other on the grass, one body using the other as a pillow, their shoes kicked off beside a warm bottle of water and a supermarket bag slowly filling with air. sometimes one of them would be reading while the other slept with an arm across their stomach. they looked sealed inside the afternoon, as though the park was their bedroom. or a final resting place; a grave almost. lying down with no purpose but to be. i wanted to know what it felt like to be that unguarded with someone and to let a whole day pass without the guilt of doing nothing productive, because the time spent with that significant other could never be felt as unproductive.
now a lot of my sundays off work disappear in exactly that way. i lie in the park with my boyfriend until the sun moves and forces us to keep dragging ourselves across the grass. we talk, read, smoke, nap, and scroll separately, occasionally turning our phones towards each other without explanation. hours pass without producing anything except decisions about where to get coffee and what to eat for dinner. it is almost identical to the scene i used to watch from a distance, except fof that now that i am inside it, it no longer has the soft focus of something imagined. there are ants, numb arms and bits of grass stuck to my clothes. yes i’m grateful for it, but i don’t always recognise it as something i manifested ! most of the time it simply feels like a sunday.
i am sograteful for these things. i don’t want gratitude to sound like something i have only just remembered to perform after being reminded that other people have less. i know that i am lucky, and i feel it often. its just gratitude exists alongside familiarity, so something can mean a lot to me and still become part of the furniture of my life. the degree went through the same process. i wanted to study creative writing and english literature, and i wanted to take my writing seriously, although “seriously” mostly meant allowing it to leave my notes app and accepting the possibility that somebody might read it. now i am doing both. university still matters deeply to me, but it no longer feels like a wish because it has deadlines and stress attached to it.
whilst writing this, i’m reminded of the saying “ i cant complain about having a lot on my plate when the goal was to eat.”
and i saved another quote recently that said, “God, if my lips don’t know what to ask for in prayer, please hear my heart.” it made me think about the things that enter my life without appearing on any manifestation list. sometimes i receive something i never thought to ask for, or something happens that initially seems unrelated to the life i’m trying to create.
i tend to assume that if i cannot immediately understand why something is happening, it must be a mistake or an interruption. i want every event to explain its role as it arrives. i would ideally like God and/or the universe to provide a short paragraph underneath difficult experiences confirming where the plot is going. some things only reveal their purpose much later. an opportunity introduces me to someone. a disappointment moves me away from a situation i would have stayed in for too long. something i didn’t choose forces me to change direction, and the new direction eventually contains something i had wanted without knowing how to name it. this is the part of manifestation that interests me more now. it is not only about consciously asking for an apartment, a relationship or a particular kind of job. sometimes my conscious mind is working with a very limited understanding of what would actually be good for me. i can ask for what i know, while trusting that my heart may be asking for something larger or more useful underneath it.
i don’t think this means forcing every painful experience into a lesson before i have even processed it. some things are simply painful while they are happening. and that is ok !! i just want to leave room for the possibility that not receiving exactly what i requested, or receiving something i never requested at all, may still be moving me towards a life that fits me better.
i also keep saying that i want more self-love and confidence.
they are permanently on the list.
most of the time, i don’t feel particularly confident. i still inspect myself too closely. i compare my life to other people’s lives without knowing anything about them. i imagine a better version of myself who wakes up earlier, finishes everything on time and never spends forty minutes feeling strange after seeing one photograph of herself.
if the version of me from two years ago met me now, though, i honestly think she would think i was cool as fuck. i live in one of my favourite cities, studying the subject i have loved since i was a little girl. i have and have somehow ended up with the strangely specific benefits i once imagined. i spend my sundays lying in the park with someone i love. from a distance, i probably look much more like the confident version of myself than i feel from inside my own head. confidence has arrived in ways i haven’t counted because i expected it to feel different. i thought it would remove uncertainty, when it may actually be the reason i keep doing things despite being uncertain. i publish the writing even though i worry about how it will be received. i go to university even when i feel behind. i have built a life while regularly feeling as though i don’t know what i’m doing.
recently i have been reading more about consciousness, manifestation and timeline jumping. so, the basic idea is that there are different possible versions of your life, and your consciousness moves towards the one you repeatedly identify with. a new timeline does not always announce itself with some massive external event. sometimes your circumstances change gradually while your internal idea of yourself takes longer to catch up.
i don’t know how literally i take every theory. i’m interested in spirituality, but i still have a functioning level of suspicion when somebody claims they changed timelines by drinking charged water under a full moon. lol. what does make sense to me is that i can be living in a reality i once imagined while still thinking from the perspective of the person who didn’t have it.
that is why the life i wanted can arrive without fully registering. the external details change first. i move, start the degree, get the job, enter the relationship and publish the writing. internally, i am still waiting for proof that things work out for me. if timeline jumping is real, perhaps the strangest part is not moving into a new reality. it is noticing that you have already moved. i associate manifestation with the period of asking. the lists, the prayers, the visualising and the almost embarrassing private certainty that something belongs in my life. once it arrives, i stop calling it a manifestation. it becomes my apartment, my job, my relationship, my degree. the language changes, and so does the amount of attention i give it.
this is why i need to remind myself that i get what i want. not immediately, not without effort and not always in the exact packaging i imagined, but there is a pattern in my life. i want something, i doubt it, i worry about how it could possibly happen, and then one day i realise i have been living with it for months.
but my anxiety refuses to use this pattern as evidence. every new desire is treated as the first one i have ever had, and every uncertain future becomes the one that definitely won’t work out. graduation feels separate from everything else because i haven’t reached it yet. from where i am standing, it still looks impossible enough to frighten me. but two years ago, this life was on the same side of impossible. i couldn’t see the route towards my dream apartment, the relationship, the degree, the writing or that weirdly specific job. now they are ordinary enough to have minor inconveniences attached to them.
i don’t believe manifestation means sitting still and expecting the universe to log into weblearn on my behalf. i have to participate in the timeline i want. sometimes that means behaving like the person who will graduate before i completely believe i am her. i still have to open the document, ask for help, do the work and return after avoiding it.
i also don’t think doubt cancels a manifestation. most of what i have arrived while i was doubting something, which is fortunate because otherwise my negative thoughts would have far too much power. the universe has apparently managed to work around my tendency to panic after receiving an email.
i still want more, and gratitude has not made me desireless. i don’t think it is supposed to. i just need to stop treating every new desire as evidence that my current life is lacking. there are things i am asking for now that may eventually feel as normal as taking the train to work without paying for it myself or spending a sunday lying beside my boyfriend in the park.
perhaps this is what conscious manifestation looks like for me at the moment. less effort spent trying to force myself into absolute certainty, and more attention paid to the evidence already around me. when i worry that graduation or anything else i want is too far away, i can look at my own life and remember that this has happened before. i have wanted, doubted, continued and eventually adjusted so completely to receiving that i forgot it was ever a request.
so yeah, sometimes you have to stop and look around to remember that the life you see as normal is made up of things you once prayed for. and how magical is that !
—jasmine xx
this is incredible jas x