27/04/2026
It feels like a year has passed in about a week. Looking back at the decision we made to come to Europe, it feels a bit like a fever dream. I was, and still am in many ways, feeling very untethered and a bit lost, but I’m lost with a sense of purpose and with a network of people who understand me, so maybe that feeling of being lost is more how it feels to constantly push for growth and change despite discomfort, uncertainty, and despair.
The tragedy of growth is that you can never go back to the person you were before you grew— the person I was before I opened my eyes wider and wider is now gone and I can’t do the same things he did, or I will become a shell of my former self. Usually, people seem to reflect mostly on the positive aspects of growth (and everything for that matter), but I find, like everything else, that growth is a mixed bag, and it doesn’t call to everyone as loudly or as enchantingly, at least not in the same directions. It makes me wonder how much of my choices are my own and how many were just bound to happen given my past, personality, algorithm, etc.
Of course we say growth is worth it, because to stay the same while our wounds and problems fester would be spiritual su***de, but much of how we frame the narrative when we sit down to write captions like this one seem to me to be fueled by a sense of needing to justify all the toil. To be honest, becoming aware of this bias makes me hesitant to write anything at all for fear of looking back and cringing a bit 🫣😂.
I will say this: I think often of the fact that my body will one day be unable to do all that it does now, and the people I love dearly will be dying as I wait my turn and reflect often on what they and this life all meant to me. I fear this inevitable end, but I also realize that if it weren’t inevitable, there would be very little meaning, urgency, and respite from it all. I suppose one good thing about growth is that things become more than 2 dimensional in your mind, because death just used to terrify me, and while that still is a huge part of what death makes me feel, it’s no longer the whole story.
I want to write more, but ig won’t let me 😑
