Adventure #61: Not Who I Expect

"We're all rough drafts of the people we're becoming." ~ Bob Goff

Of my millions of thoughts, this one won't stop replaying in my mind: I am the farthest I have ever been from who I thought I was and the closest I have ever been to the person I never thought I could be. I'm a mess. I'm a beautiful, broken disaster and I keep blaming life for that. But it's still a life I'm trying to build for the better.

I ask myself constantly, "What's the point of all of this?" I answer myself every time with, "Love. Just love." I don't know that that truly answers the question in even the vaguest sense. And I roll my eyes at my own answer...why must I so grossly romanticized this?

This disaster believes so completely in love and its abilities that it has destroyed me over and over again. Or at least, that's what it feels like. I live to love others. I thrive on it, until I don't. And I wonder time and time again if I'm doing this wrong. Because I only have myself to blame, right?

I take on what's not mine. I feel guilty when it's not enough or I can do literally nothing. I've brought with me these same habits that have kept me "safe" until now. And yet, I'm nothing like I was.

But in the same way, I don't know who I am. I'm not even sure I know how to figure out who I am. It's terrifying and exhilarating. But more than anything it's just confusing. The contradictions in my life are seemingly unending. Some examples: I don't fully believe in God but I can't stop praying and talking to Him. Or the fact that I want to run away and yet I feel grounded and stable. A big one is that I seek to numb and pacify the waves of emotion that drag me down but my highest self feels deeply and allows space for the emotions to exist without making demands on them.

Coming back to the point, being a mess is acceptable. At least, I hope it is because I am one. And our messes are going to leak and merge and splatter on to other people's. While this is also acceptable, and inevitable, we have to take responsibility for those instances. It's not for them to clean it all up. We are in this together, despite how lonely life regularly seems.

And through these messy adventures, I apologize for whoever has been affected by the mess that is me. Perhaps more importantly though, you're not alone in this struggle. And you're not the only disaster there is. You're in good company.