My brain said "hold my coffee, I got you." Here's what it did next.
Five years of ignoring eight inches of wrought iron + One neural pathway later — oasis.
I Didn’t Lose My Oasis. I Just Hadn’t Opened the Door Yet.
Something happened after my brain lit up watching that 1964 baby blue Mustang on television. You may want to read it first before going futher into this article
(https://www.monirosesoul.com/p/tears-flowed-when-i-saw-that-1964)
A day or so later I got an itch.
The particular kind — the one that lives in your body before it becomes a thought. I wanted to be outside. The way I used to be outside when I had my own backyard, my own deck, my own patch of green that felt specifically mine.
But I live in a high rise now.
So I stood there with the itch and the high rise and absolutely no obvious solution.
And then — not dramatically, not with any kind of plan — I just got curious.
What if I used what’s actually here?
That’s when I looked at my balcony.
I should describe this balcony honestly.
It’s approximately eight inches of wrought iron.
I’m not exaggerating for effect. It is a genuinely small balcony with an ornate iron railing that is considerably more charming than the parking lot it overlooks.
For five years I have stood at these French doors and looked at this balcony and thought — that doesn’t count. I had stood at the doors of the balcony hundreds of times wishing It had been built wider so I could actually sit outside
.
It didn’t look like what I had before. The deck. The pool. The feeling of stepping outside into something expansive and green and specifically mine. That kind of ease lives in your body. You don’t forget it.
And because the balcony didn’t match the memory — because it was eight inches of wrought iron overlooking a parking lot instead of a backyard with a pool — I decided it didn’t count.
So I ignored it.
For five years.
And then the Mustang happened. My mind, my brain had been ignited by the recognition of who I was as a teen. That ignition sparked curiosity and desire.
And something inside me lit up and started looking around and apparently decided that the balcony situation needed to be addressed.
No grand plan. Just a quiet thought that arrived one morning like it had been waiting for exactly this opening:
What if I used what’s actually here?
So I pulled a chair from my foryer— a chair that had been sitting there doing absolutely nothing for an embarrassing amount of time — dragged it out to the eight inches of wrought iron added a small table, put my coffee on it, and sat down
.
And then I looked up
.
I wasn’t looking at a parking lot.
I was sitting under the most extraordinary canopy of green — branches reaching over the railing like they’d been waiting to be noticed. Birds hopping through them. Fresh air. The particular quiet of a rainy morning in a downtown I chose because I wanted to live somewhere that felt alive.
Same apartment. Same eight inch balcony. Completely different experience.
The oasis was never gone.
I just hadn’t opened the door to the one that was waiting.
Here’s what I think happened — and why I’m putting these two pieces together.
The Mustang unlocked something. Not just emotionally — neurologically. Those dormant pathways lit up and started firing and suddenly my brain had energy and curiosity and the particular willingness to try something without knowing if it would work.
And what it tried first was the balcony.
Which has been there for five years.
Which took approximately one hallway chair and fifteen minutes to transform into the thing I’d been missing.
I don’t think this is just about balconies.
I think a lot of us are standing at doors we haven’t opened because what’s on the other side doesn’t look like what we had before.
It doesn’t match the memory. It doesn’t feel big enough. It doesn’t count.
But maybe that’s not a reason to keep the door closed.
Maybe the oasis isn’t behind you.
Maybe it’s been waiting — in eight inches of wrought iron and a canopy of green and a chair from the hallway — for you to finally decide it counts.
If something in this story stayed with you — if you felt the recognition before you felt the words for it — I want you to know there’s a place for that.
I’ve been quietly building something called the Monirose Soul Circle. It’s a small group of women who are done waiting for their life to feel like theirs again. Not a support group. Not a place to process pain, though we understand it. A place to think out loud with women who have lived enough to know what they’re talking about — and who want peers, not cheerleaders.
We share what’s true. We ask the real questions. We hold each other to the version of ourselves we’re trying to grow into, not the version we’ve been performing.
If you’re just beginning to understand that you’re allowed to want what you want — that’s exactly the right moment to come in.
You don’t need to have it figured out. You just need to be done pretending you don’t care.
Come see if it feels like home.
And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.