I can’t remember who said it first, me or my best friend. We were in his apartment, high on weed, watching YouTube videos when this thought emerged: “Let yourself happen.” We laughed about it and moved on.

That phrase didn’t really sink in until now, when I find myself at the end of two turbulent years where I lost myself completely. The loss of self started a long time before that, but it culminated just recently, and the realization has brought me to a halt. and internally, I insisted, “There has to be something I can do.”

Somehow, I had gotten in my own way. Given myself up for other people. Missed out on opportunities, left goals unaccomplished, felt less than I was worth, felt guilty to have what I want and, therefore, never had my needs met. Experienced constant instability and fear that I would lose my fragile, self-imposed identity.

If you asked a clinician, they’d tell you I had borderline personality disorder, but that would make me a victim, which leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. It’s not as hopeless as that. To put it in less fatalistic terms: I had simply been forgetting to be who I was.

It happened because I thought I knew what I should be doing, where I was going to go, who I was going to be with, and how I, myself, would be. I thought I could control the whole thing and force it into existence. I was an individual, and I knew who I was.

After so many years, that route of “making myself happen” wasn’t getting anywhere. Trying to force it to happen had the opposite effect; it always drove what I wanted away. Now broken and feeling lost at the end of the road, hardened by loss, alone, I realize: life was never about making anything happen. It was about remaining open enough to let myself happen, no matter what came my way.

To experience as a self, not by forcing, but by literally following the natural flow of things and the authentic feeling of my heart. To not have beauty and value placed on me by someone, but to be all of those things entirely on my own.

This blog is a love letter to myself, written with my heart wide open, so you can witness the beauty of me coming into existence.