In yourself right now is all the place you've got

It’s a hard thing, realizing you aren’t who you want to be.

Harder still to realize the path you’ve been on will never take you there.

Harder still when the thing you have to let go of was never bad to begin with.

There’s a stillness to it.

A calm, settled feeling.

That’s what makes it feel so unsettling.

Inside, you’re boiling over.

A clarity that costs you your innocence.

Grief for all that was to come.

Sadness for the life that will never exist.

Time is a funny thing.

Nothing lasts forever.

And somehow, the things we choose to let go of often carry less weight than the things we lose against our will.

There’s shame in letting go.

Guilt too.

But good or bad, every experience shapes us. Forms us.

Some things are never meant to stay.

That doesn’t make them any less meaningful.

We need a word for the beautiful things we don’t get to keep.

And yet...

There’s that feeling in your gut.

The one that simmers and never settles.

You can ignore it.

But it doesn’t go away.

It calls you forward.

But will you listen?

Or end up back at the beginning all over again?

Maybe that’s what growing up really is.

Not certainty.

Not confidence.

Not having the whole path laid out in front of you.

Just reaching a point where continuing to ignore yourself becomes more painful than change.

Nobody is going to hand you permission to become yourself.

Hell, it might not even make sense to you at first.

But if something in you keeps calling you forward, eventually you have to decide whether you’re willing to listen.

I don’t really know what comes next.

Just that it would feel untrue to keep walking down the road I’m on now.

P.S. I’ve been thinking a lot about pressure and freedom lately.

I recently published a short essay called The Freedom Paradox. It goes deeper into some of what I’ve been working through.

eBook + audiobook here:
https://jackjohnstonwrites.gumroad.com/l/freedom-paradox