There have been a few periods in my life where i genuinely did not know what i was doing or where things were going. Not the productive uncertainty of being between chapters. The heavier kind where the

There is an unspoken requirement in most adult environments that you present yourself as functional. Handling things. On top of it. Maybe acknowledging stress in a general manageable way that signals you

For a long time i was milestone oriented in a way that made the spaces between milestones feel like waiting rooms. The degree, the job, the relationship, the apartment, the next level of whatever ladder

I trusted someone completely once. Not naively, not without knowing them first. After years of consistent evidence that they were who they presented themselves to be. The trust was built slowly and felt

I had a list. Not written down formally but existing clearly in my mind. Things i was going to do someday. Places i was going to see. Conversations i was going to have. The book i was going to read, the

Self love as a phrase landed badly for me for a long time. Felt like it belonged to a specific aesthetic that had more to do with face masks and captions than with anything substantive. I dismissed it

I have started over more than once. Not always by choice. Sometimes circumstances simply removed what was there and starting over was the only honest response to what remained. source The version of starting

Nobody tells you about the social cost of becoming a different person. The way growth is supposed to be celebrated and how it actually disrupts things in ways that are more complicated than any celebration

I described myself a certain way for years. Used specific words. Had a reliable self narrative that explained why i was the way i was, what i valued, how i operated. It felt like self awareness. It was

There was a person in my life i spent years trying to help in ways they had not asked for. Not maliciously. I genuinely cared about them and could see things in their situation that seemed obvious from

Not in a dramatic way. Not a sudden shift toward grand gestures or bucket list adventures. More quiet than that. More ordinary than that. I was with someone in their last weeks once. Sat with the reality

At some point in my thirties i had to sit honestly with the gap between the life i had imagined for myself by now and the life i was actually living. source Not because the life i was living was bad. In

There was a long stretch where i operated on a kind of background faith that something external would eventually resolve things. The right opportunity would appear. Someone would recognise what i was capable

There is a version of letting go that gets misunderstood constantly. The one where you finally stop holding onto something or someone that was not working, and people around you interpret the release as

I catch it sometimes in the middle of ordinary things. Making a mistake at work and the internal response arriving immediately, sharp, unkind, in language i would never use toward someone else in the same

There was a thing i wanted to do for four years before i actually did it. Four years of being almost ready. Of waiting for the right conditions to align. Of accumulating reasons why now was not quite the

I told someone close to me about something i wanted to do once. Something that had been sitting in me for a while, something that genuinely excited me in the rare way that real things do when you allow

The successes in my life have been good to me. They gave me confidence, momentum, proof that certain approaches worked. I am grateful for them. But if i am being completely honest about what actually taught

I had a friend who told me things i did not always want to hear. Not cruelly. Not with any visible enjoyment in delivering difficult news. Just honestly, in the straightforward way of someone who respected

I stayed somewhere for two years past the point it made sense because i felt i owed it loyalty. Not a person, a situation. A commitment i had made to myself at a time when i had less information than i