So, Where Have I Been?

There's a version of us we're always supposedly working toward. Calmer, more rested, better at boundaries, finally drinking enough water. At some point, someone turned even returning to ourselves into a ten-step process.

We call it a journey because that's the only shape we know how to give it, something with a destination, a before and after, a version of us waiting at the end who has it more together. But going back to ourselves has very little to do with becoming anyone.

It happens in smaller ways than that. Maybe we notice how much attention has been going outward, how we're landing, whether the conversation went the way we hoped, whether we should have said something differently three hours ago. We've spent so long reading everyone else in the room that we forgot to keep reading ourselves, and eventually it occurs to us that we haven't checked in for a while.

There are roles we get good at wearing. The responsible one. The one who keeps things moving and remembers what everybody needs before they ask. The one who can tell something is wrong across a room before anyone says it out loud. None of that is fake, necessarily; it's just practiced, and practiced things have a way of becoming part of how we move through the world.

We pick up so much along the way. Other people's expectations, old versions of ourselves, opinions we took seriously longer than we should have. Somewhere under all of it, our own inner voice starts sounding like a committee reviewing our performance instead of like us. Worth asking how many people actually need to sit in on that meeting.

And then there are the afternoons that don't ask anything of us. We aren't improving, we aren't explaining ourselves to anyone; tiredness is just tiredness instead of a character flaw we need to manage. The afternoon doesn't have a lesson attached to it. It's just an afternoon, which turns out to be rarer than it should be.

Maybe that's what returning actually feels like. Not a realization, not the clean kind anyway, more like we stop negotiating with ourselves long enough to hear ourselves again.

We keep talking about getting back to ourselves like it's somewhere down the road. It might just be the moment we stop leaving ourselves out of the conversation we've been having the whole time.