The Space Between Who I Was and Who I’m Becoming

There was a time when I lived by the ticking of progress—each task a measure, each success a breath of validation. I mistook motion for meaning, achievement for worth.

I built myself from outcomes, layer upon layer of doing, until the silence beneath it all became unbearable.

Now, the noise is gone. And what’s left is a strange kind of stillness—not peace, not yet, but a numb hum in the chest, a hollow where certainty used to live.

I grieve the version of me who knew exactly what to chase. I grieve the comfort of direction, the illusion of control. And in the quiet, I hear the echo of my own doubt—the voice that asks if I am anything without the gold stars and finished lines.

But somewhere in the rubble, a softer truth stirs. Maybe I was never meant to be built from milestones. Maybe I am meant to be found in the pauses—in the breath before the next step, in the trust that the path will unfold even when I cannot see it.

So I gather the pieces, not to rebuild what was, but to create something freer—a self unmeasured, a life unplanned.

I will learn to stand in the uncertainty, to let the unknown become a kind of faith.

Because life has never followed the blueprints I drew, and maybe that’s the point—to stop defining myself by what I’ve done, and start becoming who I already am.