I spend a lot of time trying to understand things.
Usually by pulling them apart until I can find the place where what something was supposed to be and what it actually became stopped being the same thing.
Systems. Decisions. Relationships. People. Especially people…
And, unfortunately for me… I happen to be one of them.
I’ve spent years studying my own life like it might eventually surrender an answer key.
The questions rarely sound like the ones that came before them.
But somehow, they keep circling the same things.
Why do some people become softer after loss, while others become harder?
Why can I remember a conversation from fifteen years ago, word for word, but then forget why I walked into my kitchen?
Why am I willing to attempt a one-hundred-mile race through the middle of nowhere, Illinois, but still occasionally feel anxious walking into a room full of people?
Why do some moments stay with us forever; …while entire years seem to disappear all at once?
And how are you supposed to know who you are, when the person you’re trying to identify keeps changing?
I used to think I’d eventually figure that last one out.
This is something I used to be very confident about. But I’ve been very confident about a lot of things.
I once failed a licensing exam and walked out of the testing center feeling like I’d been told by an entire industry that I wasn’t capable of becoming the person I was trying to become.
So I went back. I took the test again. …and I passed.
Apparently, I’d decided that the appropriate response to professional redemption was to sign up for a one-hundred-mile race.
And, yes. That was the actual sequence of events.
I made it 65.97 miles. I know it to the hundreth of a mile.
That’s just what happens when you don’t finish. It was plain as day. Right next to my name;
“DNF”… Did Not Finish.
After a while, I realized failure had convinced me I wasn’t capable of very much. While success, on the other hand, had somehow tricked me into thinking I was capable of anything.
Turns out, both were wrong. And the gap between the two is… roughly where I live.
Maybe that’s why I’m so suspicious of absolutes now.
Life has handed me enough evidence to know better. Although, there is a certain irony in becoming suspicious of absolutes.
Or, more precisely… a certain contradiction;
Everything changes.
Some of my plans have bloomed beautifully. Others were already rotting at the roots before they had a chance to grab onto anything promising.
I’ve started over more times than I expected to. More times than I wanted to. …more times than I thought I could.
I’ve lost people I loved.
I’ve watched certainty disappear directly in front of me.
I’ve made decisions I’m profoundly proud of. I’ve also made decisions that, looking back now, leave me with some fairly reasonable questions about what exactly I thought I was doing.
I’ve learned I’m capable of things I would’ve once sworn I wasn’t. I’ve also learned there are parts of myself I’d probably know considerably less about if life hadn’t insisted on making the introduction.
I’ve been humbled repeatedly. Because apparently once wasn’t enough.
Somewhere along the way, though, I stopped looking at those things as interruptions to my life.
They were my life.
The grief. The Failures. The ridiculous risks. The ones that paid off. The ones that absolutely did not. The conversations that changed something permanently.
The random moments that seemed meaningless until years later.
An idea. A memory. A decision. A belief. A lesson.
One thread connecting to the next. Then to another…
I think that’s why I write.
Not because I’ve figured anything out. Quite the opposite, actually.
Writing is where I put things under the magnifying glass. Where I can turn something over long enough to notice what I missed while I was busy living through it.
It’s how I understand people. How I understand what happened. It’s how I try to understand myself.
Or at least perform understanding convincingly enough to feel like I’m making progress.
Every experience leaves fingerprints behind. You rarely notice them while they’re being left. You notice them years later, when you look backward and realize parts of your life have been shaping you the entire time.
Every version of myself I once believed was permanent eventually turned out to be temporary.
A rough draft. A stepping stone. A plot twist.
So who am I?
Honestly?
I’m not sure I’ll ever really know.
But there are a few things I do know…
I love deeply.
I ask too many questions. I find humor in places where it probably shouldn’t exist. I believe people are almost always more complicated than they appear. I believe small moments matter more than we realize while we’re living them. I believe paying attention is an act of love.
I don’t know who I’ll be five years from now. For the first time in my life, I don’t think I need to.
Despite everything I’ve lost, everything that’s hurt, and everything that didn’t go according to plan… I still look to whatever comes next with a ridiculous amount of curiosity.
Which is either extreme optimism, or very poor pattern recognition.
THE JURY’S STILL OUT.
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