growing up in the default world

i have been lurking on this site since january 2009, wondering what to say. so, in the spirit of having to start somewhere, here is a little stream of consciousness to introduce my written voice into the blogosphere...

as i was growing up, i was entrenched in, for lack of a better term, "mainstream society". i knew the grocery store, the gas station, the TV. i knew don't talk to strangers and social circles that were acceptable - wednesday night bridge club, for instance. i knew shopping and spending money as a way of getting things.
i did not know where my food came from. i did not know how to sew clothes or create random silly art pieces. i did not know what a gift was if it was not bought.
i knew church and stories about a bunch of people living lives not relevant to mine. i did not know prayer or gratitude.
i knew school and learning and marks and books. i did not know exploring and playing.
i knew i liked sitting outside and being outside, but i did not often go out there.
i grew up to become close-hearted and manufactured. but i was always questioning. i stayed up late into the night wondering exactly who says we have planets and stars and surely those are just words, a hypothesis that what we don't know in the "universe" could be "planets" and "stars", but that all we know about all of it is based on one person's theory, years and years ago. and i never dared question it aloud.
i left home to travel and expand my horizons. my mind was willing and ready, already questioning and already unwilling to stay manufactured. a lot of drugs and a stay in Indonesia propped my mind open a little more to the possibilities for love and kindness, for living a luxurious life without tv, grocery stores, electricity. for a chance at happiness not bought and sold. now, after years of exploration inward and outward, i still wrestle with that infrastructure in my mind that was instilled in me throughout childhood. in know, i've seen, i've experienced living on the edge of the "mainstream" society, the default world as we call it, and i know i can choose to be out of it entirely. if that's possible. but i keep a toe in both, a toe in the world that values lovingkindness, gift economies, openness to the possibility that we are here for more than contributing to an economic machine that doesn't really care about us... and a toe in that machine, working 40 hours a week and taking home a paycheque. subverting in my mind but submitting in my body.
mostly i wonder where the love was, and why the first 18 years of my life in the default world resulted in my emergence into the rest of my life with a closed heart, carrying aloofness and judgment around with me. ever since i opened my mind to realize love really is IT, it's been a challenge to bust open myself and really reveal my true nature. if it's true that we are love, that love is our essence and natural state, then why is it my life's challenge to go back to that source and find it?
who i am now, after 20 years of searching and moving away and away from the default world in which i grew up, is a vulnerable womon whose heart folds and unfolds constantly. i hover among different perceptions of what life should be - i should be married, own a home, have children, drive them to soccer in the minivan... instead i rent, have no children, am perpetually single, and yet make a major contribution to the community i live and work in...
sometimes i think it would be easier just to sit back and stop questioning, find a career, work 9-5, go home to the husband, watch tv, do it again the next day, go back to where i came from, and live out what i was raised to live. idling in complacent contentment, fine with this moment and without any need to challenge, question or work any harder at living ecstatically than anyone else does.
but i know who i am at the source, i have always known. even when the conditioned part of me is feeling present and strong, silence reminds me of who i really am, and where i really belong. what i am striving for is love, what i believe in is gifting, who i truly am is light. and i cannot justify not sharing this with the universe.
i knew depression, fear and loneliness throughout my childhood and teen-dom. i know joy, peace and community the further i move towards my own light.