The Shape We Keep

A couple of years ago, I realized I was angry.

Not the kind of angry where you're yelling at people. More like carrying around this frustration that never really went away.

At first I thought it was because life had been hard. I had already been going through a lot and questioning just about everything. Some days I even questioned myself. I couldn't figure out what I needed or what was wrong. Everything that had always felt familiar suddenly felt...off.

Honestly, I thought I was losing my mind.

Around the same time, I started noticing something else.

The people closest to me expected a lot from me. My best friend. My brother. My partner at the time.

It wasn't always obvious. It was just this constant feeling that I was supposed to show up a certain way. Make the right decision. Handle things. Be available. And if I didn't, it somehow became a conversation about what I should have done differently.

I don't think anyone planned it that way. But after enough years, those expectations started to feel normal. I don't think I realized how much they had shaped the way I was living.

I wasn't making many choices because they felt true to me. Most of them just fit the life I had been living.

Eventually, I got tired of feeling stuck.

I started going to the gym because I needed somewhere for all that energy to go. I picked up photography again after letting my camera sit on a shelf for years. I stopped answering every phone call the moment it came in. I spent more time by myself, sometimes just thinking, sometimes writing, sometimes driving with no place I needed to be.

At first, I was just trying to feel better.

But after a while, I noticed I was becoming curious about myself.

What do I actually enjoy?

What kind of life feels right to me?

What would I choose if nobody already had an opinion about it?

I didn't have answers right away.

But asking the questions changed something.

The things I was trying, the space I was creating, even the time alone...it all gave parts of me room that they hadn't really had before.

Looking back, I don't think I changed into someone new.

I think I slowly stopped living inside a version of myself that had been built around what everyone else expected.

I wasn't trying to reinvent my life.

I was just trying to feel better.

As it turned out, what I needed was enough space to become more of who I already was.