It’s a question I get asked so often, and one that’s so easy to answer with a simple, “I’m doing good, and you?” I’ve become quite good at giving that answer, actually. I think most of us have. There’s something almost automatic about reassuring people that we’re doing well, even when we haven’t really stopped to ask ourselves whether that’s true!!!
I think I’m in a strange period of my life. Not necessarily a bad one, but certainly not an easy one. I’m turning 25 in a few days, living in Paris, working, meeting people, starting projects, falling in love with ideas and occasionally with people who probably aren’t particularly good for me. On paper, there’s a lot happening, and most of it is quite exciting :) I have a life that a younger version of myself would probably have been very curious about. And yet, sometimes I feel terribly lost inside it.
I’ve been thinking a lot about the difference between having a full life and feeling fulfilled by it. My days are full of conversations, deadlines, people I want to meet, things I want to write, places I want to go. I’m constantly curious about other people’s lives, perhaps because asking questions has always felt easier than answering them myself. I can spend an hour asking a complete stranger about their childhood, their first love, their greatest fear, and then struggle to explain how I’m feeling when someone asks me over coffee.
And lately, I’ve been feeling quite vulnerable. I don’t think that’s necessarily something to be ashamed of, although I still catch myself treating it as a personal failure. I think I’ve spent a lot of my life trying to be someone who can do everything, go everywhere, adapt to anyone, and somehow remain completely unaffected by it all. I’m starting to realise that I’m actually quite easily affected. By people, by places, by the smallest changes in someone’s behaviour. I care a lot. Sometimes more than I’d like to admit.
I’ve also noticed that I’m not always the easiest person to love, or even to be friends with. I’ve been impatient with people who have known me for years, sometimes taking their presence for granted simply because they’ve always been there. And at the same time, I find myself terrified of losing the people I’ve only just met. There’s something quite contradictory about neglecting the relationships that have survived so many versions of me while worrying so much about whether the newer ones will last. I think I’m sometimes so afraid of being left behind that I forget I can be the one creating distance. It’s not something I’m particularly proud of, but I’m trying to pay attention to it. I don’t want to become someone who only recognises the importance of people once they start disappearing.
As for love stories, I wish I had something particularly intelligent to say. I don’t. I think I’m still learning the difference between loving someone and loving the possibility of what something could become. I’m quite romantic, which is both a beautiful quality and :))) occasionally, a logistical nightmare. I can intellectualise almost anything, except apparently my own feelings. I know what I deserve in theory, and then real life comes along and makes the theory considerably less convincing.
But I don’t want to make it sound as though I’m unhappy all the time, because I’m not. There are moments when I feel incredibly lucky. I love the people around me. I love being able to make something out of a conversation. I love walking around Paris with no particular destination, finding a book that makes me want to underline every sentence, coming home to my dog, having an idea in the middle of the night that suddenly makes everything feel possible again.
I think what I’m struggling with is accepting that all these feelings can coexist. That I can be ambitious and exhausted, independent and desperately in need of affection, grateful for my life and still want certain parts of it to be different. That being surrounded by people doesn’t necessarily mean you never feel lonely.
Maybe the most accurate answer is that I’m trying to learn how to live a life without constantly feeling the need to turn it into something. An article, a project, a story, a lesson. Sometimes things just happen, and sometimes they’re disappointing, and sometimes people don’t love you the way you hoped they would. Not everything has to become meaningful simply because it hurt.
So, how am I doing? I’m curious, a little overwhelmed, occasionally heartbroken, often very happy, and probably asking too many questions. I’m trying to be kinder to myself and a little less attached to the idea that by a certain age I should have figured everything out.
I suppose I’m doing good. Just not in the simple way that question usually expects!!!!