When You’re Too Lost To Know What You’re Missing

I think our entire lives we’ve been conditioned to think that our life starts the day we finally find the person we are supposed to spend the rest of our lives with. I think that every person on this planet deserves genuine, real, and authentic love, but rather than letting it find us, we become obsessed with looking for it. And until we’ve found it, we feel lost and unfulfilled.

We hold on so tightly to the loves that almost were. We fall so in love with the idea of someone being our forever that we don’t even allow ourselves the grace of getting to know them before we become irreversibly attached.

I’ve always assumed that this lingering feeling of lostness would dissipate once I found the person I wanted to spend my life with.

But I picture my life 10 years down the road: The love is no longer new. It is not as exciting as it once was. It doesn’t provide the same unparalleled joy.

And I ask myself: Will that love still get me out of bed in the morning? Will that love be the thing that I am the most proud of? Will that love give me total fulfillment? Will that love nourish my soul in all the ways that it deserves? Is that love the thing that I am the most passionate about?

Maybe, maybe not. But that is a risk that I am not willing to take.

So here is what I know now: The obsession that our society has created around finding your person is a distraction that temporarily takes us away from the total and complete lostness we feel within ourselves.

I have been grasping at love so hard because I am grasping for something to make me feel whole.

I don’t know who I am yet. I don’t know what I am missing.

And if I were to meet the love of my life tomorrow, those things would still be true. I still would not know who I am. I still wouldn’t know what I am missing. I still would not know what my greatest passion is.

When I am alone, I want to feel like I am not just existing, but I am living. I do not want this feeling of lostness to return even when the dust settles. I do not want another person to make me feel complete. I want to feel that wholeness on my own.

I am no longer a victim to the illusion of wholeness given by a partner. I will find it within myself. I will be my own savior.