Becoming

A reflection on the quiet grief that comes with growth—how becoming who you’re meant to be often requires letting go of who you’ve been, even when it still aches.

Most days I am bulldozer of productivity maneuvering expertly in the most awkward construction zone

Dextrous to an almost unbelievable point

Building Building Building

The sequence of my DNA reads ambition, my nuclei are programmed for progress

I am never not working toward something

Rarely do I feel the cost of growth

Because growth often feels so good it drowns out everything else

But today, I feel it

I feel nostalgic for a time in my life that I will never get back

I do not want it, but for some reason I still grieve

I remember the sensation of a full-body lust for life that energized vacant risk-taking – a naivety extinguished by too many close brushes with death

A deep loneliness from missing friends with whom I have less and less and less in common

Noticing a space between us that widens as the history we shared for so many years begins to feel like a shoe that’s two sizes too small

The dull ache of knowing the taste of a light-heartedness that I simply cannot access because I can’t un-know the truth

Weighted by The Pain I have felt, all the pain over the years, like blows to my ribs

New lines on my forehead, a heaviness to my smile, life experience shining in my eyes

and that: doubled, tripled, quadrupled

as the pain I’ve caused over the years arrives and the blows turn to bowling balls

I remember a time when my existential angst nurtured an endless creativity, instead of stifling it

No one talks about the heartbreak of reaching for your potential

I listlessly search for the grace necessary to release those from my heart who are going in another direction

My feet yearn for the bridges—not the burnt ones—the beautiful and familiar, that I will likely never cross again because my future lies elsewhere

Leaving a place, a town, a state, a relationship, a job, a friendship, a space in your life, the person that you were…

is hard even when it’s on sweet terms

I kissed who I was before on her cheek and remembered all the good times and promised I’d be back to visit soon

But I didn’t and I probably won’t

Even the most out of touch part of me knows that I won’t find who I want to be back there

Yet still, I feel the dull throb of grief of being a Person with a Past; a Human Who Has Experienced Loss

I curl up with my memories and snuggle in close and warm trying to wish all that I was well

Because I know tomorrow this ache will be gone and I’ll be back on the road to becoming who I’m meant to be: at ease, focused, unphased

But today, I feel it.

I feel the Pain of Becoming