Here’s The Thing: I Don’t Need To Be Understood

The more I see, the less I know.

I never understood the meaning of that, until after years of traveling–of moving and leaving and changing–the lines of who I thought I was blurred into an indiscernible murk.

Countries ago, I embarked on a cliché effort to “find myself”, only to watch the person I thought I was slowly unravel. If anything, traveling has made me realize how little I truly know about myself. How there are indefinite sides to who I am, and even those are ever-changing.

I used to look at others, with their seemingly identified personas, and envied their order. Yet, when I look within myself, I’m reminded that I feel best when I don’t know. I consider how much more exciting it is to be unwritten, disorderly, and messy. How much more opportunity lies within my reach when I don’t try to solve the complexities of my soul. There are so many pieces of me that remain in shambled disarray, but that’s exactly how I intend to leave them, for putting the pieces together eliminates the strokes of whim and serendipity I live for.

So here I am. I’m salad for lunch and fries for dinner. I’m a run in the morning and barstools in the evening. I’m sleeping in on cold, cloudy mornings, and waking up at 6am to hike mountains for sunrise. There’s little I love more than getting lost in nature, except maybe a café on a busy city corner. I’m made up of light and invincible days, but nights spent crying and crumbling down. I’m red lipstick and messy buns; black manicures and dirt under my nails; high heels and ski boots. I’m art, but I’m also adventure. I’m red wine and beer, decaf and espresso. I want to walk the streets of every country, yet I love no place more than home. Some days I long only for my own company, while others I seek connection with every stranger. I’ve spent a long time trying to sort through the pieces of my personality in an effort to find some sort of systemic order, only to realize I’ll forever be muddling the lines of my own definition.

Ultimately, I don’t seek to be understood. In fact, I seek to change; to morph and to grow moment by moment. I’m never constant, always in a flux of being and doing, altering and adjusting. I am everything and I am nothing. For a while, I tried to tame that insatiability and instability. I tried to define myself, to label, to find peace in a place I can hold forever. But I now realize I may never find that; that I may constantly be an inconstant, for the mystery of who I am remains one I hope to never solve.