When I was a kid, I don’t think I ever really imagined myself becoming anything. Not because I had no imagination, I was a child, of course I had dreams.
But there is a difference between imagining something and believing you will actually get to live long enough to become it.
By the time I was five, I had already experienced loss, change, and grief before I had the language, or the space, to understand it.
Five is small. Five is supposed to be scraped knees, cartoons, birthday cakes, school pictures.
It isn’t supposed to be a crash course in real life situations like death, loss, and grief. It isn’t supposed to be learning to navigate the emotions of adults around you, and learning how to regulate your nervous system. And it most definitely isn’t supposed to be swallowing your childhood whole because of it.
But life doesn’t always ask what age you’re supposed to be.
Sometimes it just happens. And when you’re that young, you don’t necessarily process what happens.
You absorb it. You adapt. You keep going.
And somewhere along the way, I became someone who stopped expecting very much from life.
I didn’t have some elaborate vision of who I would be when I grow up, and when we had to write letters to our future self I’d often wonder what the point was.
I wasn’t sitting around at ten years old thinking about my career, my apartment, my finances, or where I’d eventually live.
I wasn’t a kid putting a pillow case over my head, nor have I even planned what my wedding would look like.
Honestly, I don’t even think I expected to make it that far ahead.
And you know what? There was something strangely simple about that. If you don’t expect much from the future, the future can’t disappoint you.
At some point, it became less about: “What do I want to be?”
It was more about: “Will I even make it there?”
That is a very different way to grow up.
And looking back now, it’s almost wild to realize how young I was when I stopped wanting to exist.
I didn’t want to get up in the morning. I didn’t want to do things. I didn’t want to commit to anything.
I was the girl who would start something and then immediately give it up.
Put me in an extracurricular activity? I’d leave.
Give me something to try? I didn’t want to do it.
Ask me what I wanted to be? I didn’t know.
Ask me what I wanted to do? I didn’t know.
Ask me who I wanted to become? I hadn’t even thought about it.
And I don’t think I understood why. I just knew that I didn’t want anything. Or at least, I thought I didn’t.
Then I found something I could want.
Eventually, there was something I became passionate about. And the feeling was unlike anything I had experienced before. Because for the first time, I wasn’t forcing myself to care.
I cared. I wanted it. I could see myself in it.
And I think part of the reason I wanted it so badly was because it was familiar.
It was what I knew. It was what I had been surrounded by. It was the world I understood.
But if I’m being completely honest with myself now, I think there was something underneath that desire that I didn’t have the maturity to recognize yet.
I think I believed it would finally make me important.
Important enough to be seen.
Important enough to be heard.
Important enough that people couldn’t talk over me.
Important enough that I couldn’t be overlooked.
Important enough that I wouldn’t be overshadowed.
Important enough that maybe the world would finally have to acknowledge that I existed.
Because when you’ve spent a significant part of your childhood feeling invisible, recognition can start to look a lot like love.
Achievement can start to look like worth. Success can start to look like proof.
Proof that you mattered. Proof that you had become someone. Proof that everything you went through had somehow produced something extraordinary.
So I built a dream. And I chased it with everything I had.
And for a long time, I thought: This is it. This is what I’m supposed to do. This is who I’m supposed to become. This is the thing that will finally make all of it mean something.
I wanted to be in rooms where I couldn’t be ignored. I wanted to be around people who couldn’t talk over me. I wanted to be looked at. I wanted to be respected. I wanted to be someone people remembered. Someone people admired.
Someone people could point to and say,
“Look what she became.”
Maybe some of that was ambition. But some of it was a little girl asking the world to finally notice her.
And I didn’t know the difference.
The problem with getting exactly what you thought you wanted is the part nobody really prepares you for.
What happens when you get there? What happens when the dream you spent years chasing actually starts happening? What happens when you’re finally in the rooms?
Around the people. Around the opportunities. Around the things you once thought would make you feel like you’d finally arrived.
And instead of feeling fulfilled, you realize: I don’t want this anymore.
That realization can knock the wind out of you. Because it may be one thing to fail at a dream, but it’s another thing to realize you don’t want it.
Failure gives you a direction, but doubt can leave you staring at the map wondering where the hell you’re supposed to go next.
And when everyone around you thinks that thing is your identity, walking away from it can feel like walking away from yourself.
People ask:
“Why didn’t you do it?”
“Why didn’t you continue?”
“You were so good at that.”
“You always said this was what you wanted.”
And the truth is difficult to explain.
Because how do you tell someone: I finally got close enough to my dream to realize it was everything I didn’t actually want?
How do you explain that the dream was real? The passion was real. The work was real. The ambition was real. But the reason underneath it was something you didn’t understand yet.
I wasn’t necessarily chasing my soul’s path. I was chasing significance.
I was trying to become someone who could never again be ignored.
And eventually, I had to admit that no amount of recognition could heal the part of me that believed I needed recognition to have value.
Then came the spiritual awakening.
After COVID, something in me shifted. I started looking at my life through a completely different lens.
My awakening gave me language for things I had been feeling without knowing how to articulate them.
I started learning about dharma. About attachment. About karma. About the difference between action and attachment to the fruits of action.
About how desire itself isn’t necessarily the problem. It’s what we believe that desire will give us.
And slowly, I started looking back at my dreams differently.
I realized that maybe the dreams weren’t wrong. The lens was wrong.
The things I wanted weren’t necessarily bad. The ambition wasn’t bad.
The desire to create wasn’t bad. The desire to achieve wasn’t bad.
The desire to be seen wasn’t even something I needed to be ashamed of.
But I had attached my worth to the outcome.
I thought:
If I accomplish this, then I’ll matter.
If people know me, then I’ll matter.
If I’m successful enough, then I’ll matter.
If I become extraordinary enough, then maybe everything I’ve experienced will have been worth something.
And spirituality forced me to confront something much harder:
What if I already mattered before I accomplished any of it?
That question changed everything. Because if I already have inherent value, then achievement can no longer be responsible for proving it.
And if achievement isn’t responsible for proving my worth, then I am finally free to ask:
What do I actually want to do?
Not what will make me impressive. Not what will make people remember me. Not what will make people finally understand what I’m capable of.
What actually serves me? What serves other people? What feels aligned?
What am I here to give?
That is a much harder question. And I still don’t completely know the answer.
But I think I’m finally beginning to understand my purpose.
Maybe my purpose isn’t to become someone everyone knows. Maybe it’s to become someone who makes people feel known.
There is a difference.
I spent so much of my life wanting to be understood. Now I think I want to understand people.
I know what it feels like to feel alone in a room. To say something and feel like nobody heard you. To have something happening inside you and have nowhere safe to put it. To wonder whether anyone actually sees you.
And maybe that’s why my purpose doesn’t feel as complicated anymore.
I don’t necessarily know what title belongs on it. I don’t know exactly what career it becomes. I don’t know what form it takes.
But I know what I want the impact to feel like.
I don’t want people to feel as alone as I did. I don’t want people to feel like there is something fundamentally wrong with them because nobody understood them.
I want people to know that their stories matter. That their pain doesn’t make them unworthy. That they don’t have to become extraordinary to deserve love. That being seen isn’t something you have to earn.
Maybe I spent years trying to become a light because I knew exactly what darkness felt like.
And maybe that is the part of my story that finally makes sense.
… And then life changed again.
Because just when I thought I was beginning to understand what meaning meant to me…
I experienced the greatest loss of my life.
And suddenly all of those philosophical questions became personal again.
What does meaning mean when the person who was such a huge part of your world isn’t here to experience the life you’re still trying to build?
What does it mean to achieve something when the person you desperately want to tell isn’t sitting beside you?
How do you keep pursuing your dreams when one of the people who made the dream feel meaningful is no longer here?
I don’t have beautiful answers for all of that. I’m still figuring it out. I think that’s important to say. Because sometimes spirituality gets presented like enlightenment means you’ve stopped hurting.
It doesn’t.
Sometimes knowing better doesn’t mean hurting less. Sometimes understanding impermanence doesn’t make loss painless. Sometimes knowing that life is temporary makes you feel the temporary nature of everything even more deeply.
I’m still figuring out what my life means now. I’m still figuring out what my dreams look like without the person I imagined beside me.
I keep reminding myself that I don’t need to have that answer yet.
One thing that has changed in the last year is… I have stopped caring about milestones entirely.
Or at least, I stopped letting them define me. I still catch myself sometimes. Of course I do. I’m human.
Sometimes I still look around. Sometimes I still wonder if I’m where I thought I’d be. Sometimes I still feel that little sting when I realize I’m not following the timeline I once imagined.
But I don’t worship the timeline anymore.
Because I’ve learned something the hard way: You can manifest something and still not be the person who can sustain it.
You can get the house. The relationship. The career. The recognition. The money. The opportunity. The room you’ve always dreamed of entering.
And still lose yourself inside it.
I’ve lived enough experiences to understand that getting something and being ready to hold something are two completely different things.
Sometimes life doesn’t give you the thing because it’s denying you.
Sometimes you aren’t ready to sustain what you’re asking for.
And sometimes the lesson isn’t: “How do I get this?”
It’s: “Who do I need to become so that when I get this, I don’t lose myself?”
That changed the way I think about timing.
Maybe I’m not behind. Maybe I’m becoming.
Maybe there are parts of me that needed to develop before the life I want could actually feel like mine. And maybe that’s why starting over feels so exhausting.
But when you start over again, you’re not starting from zero. NO!
You’re starting with everything you’ve already learned.
You’re starting with the knowledge of what you don’t want.
You’re starting with a deeper understanding of yourself.
You’re starting with scars.
You’re starting with wisdom you didn’t ask for.
You’re starting with a version of yourself who knows what it feels like to get what she thought she wanted and realize it wasn’t enough.
That isn’t nothing. That’s actually a lot.
The person I thought I’d be by now probably had more answers. She probably knew exactly what she wanted. She probably had a very clean timeline. She probably thought success would feel like arriving somewhere.
But she wouldn’t have known what I would experience. She wouldn’t have known what would change me. She wouldn’t have known who I would lose. Who I would meet. What I would survive. What I would learn. What I would eventually stop wanting.
She wouldn’t have known that some dreams would expire. Or that other dreams would take their place. She wouldn’t have known that sometimes you have to build an entire life before you understand what kind of life you actually want.
And maybe that’s okay. We grieve lives we thought we would have, and then we move forward.
Because I don’t think I’m supposed to become the woman I imagined when I was younger. She was created from the information she had. She wanted recognition because she knew what it felt like to be overlooked.
She wanted achievement because she knew what it felt like to feel insignificant. She wanted importance because she spent so much of her life feeling invisible. She wanted to rise from the ashes because she needed the ashes to mean something.
And I don’t judge her for that anymore. I understand her.
But I also don’t need to keep living for her. Because now I know something she didn’t.
Being seen is not the same as being known. Being admired is not the same as being loved.
Achievement is not the same as purpose. And becoming important is not the same as becoming fulfilled.
I don’t need the world to look at me and say, “Look what she became.”
I just want to know that when I leave this world, I will have made a difference in lives. Hopefully the world.
But, I want to look at myself and say, “Look who I became.”
That is enough.
I’m not behind. I’m finally on my own timeline.
There are people who know what they want at eighteen. There are people who figure it out at twenty-five.
There are people who completely reinvent themselves at thirty. There are people who do it at fifty.
There are people who spend their entire lives becoming. There is no universal sequence. And yet we act like there is.
Graduate. Career. Relationship. House. Marriage. Kids. Success. Happiness.
Check. Check. Check.
As if life is a checklist and we’re all taking the same exam at different speeds.
But life isn’t a standardized test. There isn’t one correct answer sheet. And I don’t think success can mean the same thing at every age.
At twenty-two, success might mean proving you can do something.
At twenty-seven, it might mean realizing you don’t have to prove anything.
At thirty-something, maybe it means having the courage to admit that the dream you worked so hard for isn’t actually your dream anymore.
Maybe success is waking up and liking the person you’re waking up as.
Maybe it’s having relationships that feel safe.
Maybe it’s creating something that didn’t exist before you made it.
Maybe it’s becoming the kind of person who can hold the things you once prayed for without allowing them to become your identity.
Maybe it’s being a light for someone who is still standing in the darkness you once knew.
I don’t know exactly what I’m going to do with my life. And strangely, I don’t think that scares me the way it used to.
Because once upon a time, I didn’t even know if I wanted a life.
Now?
I want one. I want to live it. I want to create. I want to love. I want to help. I want to understand. I want to build something meaningful. I want to leave something behind that makes someone else feel less alone.
Maybe that’s the first thing I’ve ever wanted that doesn’t require an audience. And perhaps that’s how I know it’s different.
The person I thought I’d be by now isn’t a failure. She’s a version of me I imagined before I had lived enough life to know what I actually wanted.
She was a prediction. Not a promise.
And I don’t have to spend the rest of my life trying to catch up to a person who never existed.
I can thank her. I can grieve her. I can understand why she wanted what she wanted. I can honor how badly she needed to be seen.
And then I can let her go.
Because I don’t think my life is late. I think it’s still becoming.
And maybe the greatest plot twist of all is realizing that the life I was chasing was never really the point. The point was becoming someone who could finally see herself clearly enough to choose a different one.
Maybe I don’t need to become extraordinary. I just need to stay honest.
Maybe I don’t need everyone to know my name. I just need the people I encounter to feel a little less alone.
Maybe I don’t need to rise from the ashes so everyone can see how high I flew. Maybe I can simply take what survived the fire and use it to keep someone else warm.
And maybe that’s the timeline I was looking for all along.
– nk
