This piece was written during a time when I felt completely disconnected from the life that I thought I’d be living by now.
When I turned 23,
the world around me sped up, degrees
finished, careers started,
paths unfolding with names like
teacher, nurse, manager,
certified, employed, promoted.
People around me were finding their rhythmposting
updates that sounded like progress,
moving forward with certainty,
direction, pride.
But me?
I was surrounded by unfinished sentences,
half-attempts, loose ends.
A future written in maybes
and question marks.
I was stuck.
Job to job.
Course to course.
Searching for something
that felt like me.
But nothing did.
I was searching for meaning
in ruins.
In the aftermath of trauma
that clung to me like a second skin.
The world expected me to know-
Who I was.
What I wanted.
Where I was going.
But I didn't.
I had no map.
No compass.
Not even a vague idea
of what I liked,
what I stood for,
who I was beyond survival.
And in the space where identity should have lived,
loneliness took root.
It didn't live in silence,
it lived in the quiet ache
of scrolling through lives that moved forward
while mine stood still.
It lived in the pretending.
Pretending I was okay.
Pretending I had direction.
Pretending I didn't notice
how far behind I felt.
It was the feeling of being lost
in a world where everyone else
seemed to know the way.
Alone in the ocean,
no lighthouse in sight.
But it's hard to say it out loud-
Does speaking it
make it more real?
Does admitting it
draw attention?
Will people finally see
just how far behind I amand
laugh,
or leave?
What if saying "I'm lonely"
only makes the people disappear faster?
What if saying “I’m lonely”
makes me disappear faster?
But
I'm still here.
Even if I don't have a title,
a house,
or a five-year plan.
I have breath.
I have softness.
And a quiet kind of strength
that comes from surviving
when no one else sees the storm.
I'm still here.
And maybe that's something.
Maybe being lost
is just the beginning
of being found.
At 23, I watched the people around me find their paths—graduating, starting careers, building lives with structure and direction—while I was just trying to hold myself together. I’d dropped out of uni, changed jobs more times than I could count, and felt like I was constantly searching for something solid to stand on. But nothing felt like it fit.
I wasn’t just unsure of my future—I was unsure of myself. I didn’t know what I liked, what I believed in, or who I was beyond the survival mode I’d lived in for years. That’s where the loneliness really crept in. Not just being physically alone, but feeling like no one could see the version of me that was struggling to keep up. Like if I admitted I was lost, everyone would pull away even faster.
Writing this helped me make sense of that foggy, stuck space. It was a way of reassuring myself: I may not have everything figured out, but I’m still here. I’m still trying. And that counts for something.
If anyone else feels the same—uncertain, behind, like they’re floating through their twenties without a map—I hope this is a reminder that you’re truly not alone.
