Looking in All the Wrong Places

Here I am. Alone. Sitting in my apartment on a Saturday night by myself. It wouldn't be much different than any other weekend except I am aware of my own isolation.  The feeling of finally slowing down enough to realize this is slightly unsettling.  All I see is an endlessly growing list of tasks and things I have to do and each day slipping away before I can do much of anything that is on it. I haven't been this way all my life but as of recently it is something I have become acutely aware of. 25 years old. And alone.

This week has been a whirlwind. I have moved into a new apartment up in Salt Lake - back in Sugar House again. The journey getting here was expensive, tiring, and long. And the vacation I took recently feels more and more like a blink of an eye. I went to San Diego on a road trip to relax after leaving my summer job before graduate school began this week. However, driving back was exhausting and it was a real pain in the neck. And while I was down in San Diego, I found another place that feels like home and a shadow box at the same time.

I know that there are people in the world that love me. I know them intimately. They are my friends. My family. They let me not only into their homes but their lives and their hearts. They let me come in so deep and yet it all still feels like shadows. A feeling as if it is nothing but some hollow shell. A machine that moves and turns and spins in a predictable manner as if it was all designed with both its perfection and imperfection. I know that it is not them. I can see how fulfilling their lives are. I can see the joy, happiness, acceptance, and concern. I can watch as their relationships evolve and progress. I can observe their roller coasters of emotions as each situation flows into the next in their endless drama of seen and unforeseen consequences. But I feel removed from it all as if I am a ghost or a shadow living among them.

Have you ever felt like you belonged everywhere and nowhere at the same time? The feeling of being unable to root yourself anywhere including the places where you know you should be? I really can't understand how sometimes I can feel so at home in my own skin and doing my own thing at my own pace and other days it can make me feel broken and incomplete. It is when you look in the mirror and all you see is half of a person. It isn't that you aren't in your reflection but what you see is not you. It is the you that the world sees but that still isn't the real you. You are so many layers deep that it is hard for you even to know if there is any water at the bottom of that well or if it just goes on into a bottomless abyss.

Where do I see myself? I am coming home from my graduation trip with my family from Cancun. I am there with my sisters, my parents, my brother and his wife, and then there is my wife. I can never see her face but I can hear her laugh and see her smile. I can never find her face so I can't ever see her eyes. This is me - the other half of me. I have tried to be patient and there is no other real choice but to continue to be so. It is like the end of the day really. You drag your tired and beaten body back to your home so you can look out at the trees and watch the colors change from green to orange to red to black as the sun sets on this day and the night begins only to wait so the it can rise again and start all over. I have heard that you need to lose yourself before you can try and find yourself, but I must keep looking in all the wrong places.