Holding Things Together

Some days life feels less like living and sometimes not. Not in a dramatic way. Nothing collapsing. Not yet.

Just small adjustments all day long.

You wake up and something is already there with you. Not exactly pain (but sometimes physically yes). Not quite sadness either. Just a sort of weight in the background that wasn’t there years ago.

Health has a way of doing that.

Life as well.

It introduces you to parts of yourself you didn’t expect to meet.

One thing I keep circling lately is identity. I realise I have a real problem defining it. Even my own. I’m not sure I understand what it actually is.

For a long time I thought I did.

Work helps create the illusion. Roles help too. Professor. Researcher. Runner. Father. The usual labels people stack together and call a self.

But when things get a bit rough those labels feel thin. Surprisingly thin.

You start wondering what sits underneath them.

-Who exactly am I now?

-What part of this is actually me?

I don’t mean that in a tidy philosophical way. I hate philosophy lol! It’s more like a low level question that sits in the back of the mind. Never fully answered. Just hovering there.

Maybe everyone has this problem and we simply avoid saying it out loud.

Struggle seems to bring it closer to the surface though.

Patience shows up in strange places when you’re dealing with things. Hospital corridors, alone as alway. Early mornings after broken sleep, not always alone. Long walks where the same thoughts drift around again and again.

Years ago identity felt fairly solid. A job. Plans. A future that looked predictable enough.

Life has a habit of rubbing those lines out.

What remains is quieter.

Just a person trying to keep going. Trying to make sense of things while the outside world carries on as if nothing much has changed.

Some days that endurance feels like strength.

Other days it just feels tiring.

Still, something odd happens if you pay attention. Meaning doesn’t disappear completely. It just moves somewhere smaller.

A conversation that arrives at the right moment.

Cold air first thing in the morning.

The simple fact you are still here.

Still thinking.

Still searching.

Maybe identity isn’t something we discover once and keep forever.

Maybe it’s something that keeps shifting. Something we rebuild slowly as life rearranges the pieces.

I’m still trying to understand my own.

Late at night, when the mind wanders (ruminates) through the unfinished parts of a life, that uncertainty can feel unsettling. But occasionally there’s a strange comfort in it too.

The struggle isn’t the end of the story.

It might simply be the point where a different version of you begins.

BW, Leigh

(Can'tsleep; typing on phone so apologies for typos😎)