And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for...

I packed my life into boxes for the third time in my very short adult life. I wasn’t going far, but I was going and that seemed like enough. Until it wasn’t. I thought moving out would reawaken the creative inside me that’s been dormant for what seems like an eternity. But here I am months later, still not finding what it is I’m looking for. I went to therapy the other day, and she told me that what I’m feeling could be a direct result of losing a piece of myself. The part that I feel makes me who I am. Mind you, this was after a fifteen minute conversation about how much I feel alone. I blamed it on being so far away from my family. But I’m beginning to think she is right. I am missing a part of me. 

I want to be more than Kierstin: shift supervisor at Starbucks, stagnant and unhappy.
I want to be Kierstin: the writer, the explorer, the girl thats living.

But she doesn’t seem to be anywhere lately. She booked a one way ticket to some beautiful place, is sipping a beer on a beach, watching me loose my mind. I seemed to have wandered into indifference. I don’t feel the same way I used to. Music is just background noise I don’t feel it in my heart. I binge watch television shows to get any semblance of emotional connection. What has happened to me? 

Writers block is natural, or so they say, but what if this isn’t a block? What if it’s the end of the road and as I turn around the street becomes a massive sinkhole and I’m stuck on the wrong side. That’s silly of me to say, because once a writer always a writer, right? But it just doesn’t feel that way to me. The love, drive, and desire, once so prevalent has dwindled into short sentences berating myself and an abundance of scribbles. When did this become my life? When did I lose the love for the only thing I’ve ever known to be myself? 

I’ve slain the depression dragon year after year, and each time emerges something beautiful. But this is all different. It’s all wrong. Nothing is right. I don’t spend my evenings authoring paragraphs, crafting fictional lives, or ranting about my feelings. And they say the pen is mightier than the sword. I call fallacy because when I hold that pen I don’t feel mighty. Hell, I don’t feel at all. 

I’ve fallen into this settled life and the drive for more remains in some dormant corner of my brain. Maybe it’s fear I’m living in. So resistant to and scared of change that I’ve lost who I am. Or at least the person I’ve always known to be my truest self. I’ve lost the love for living and I’ve settled with just getting by. I’ve become the person I swore I’d never be. I slave away at a job that I reap no positive benefits from any longer. I spend most of my time wishing I was anywhere but here. I never thought this life for myself. 

And I still haven’t found what I’m looking for…