TL;DR:

I thought I knew "myself." Turns out I didn't.

Long Version:

Perhaps like you, I was shaped by everyone and everything. I believed I was the shape and forgot I was the clay itself.

I spent a lifetime being who I should be. I achieved. I succeeded. But the girl still didn't want to be with me. I'd done everything I thought I needed to be loved and it still wasn't enough.

I wasn't enough.

In an act of grace, I finally surrendered, creating an opening for the pain I'd hidden away to say "hello!" In the depths of my shadow, I discovered the light and love that has never not been here.

I often tell people, "I felt like a cloud over my head had lifted…and I never realized it was there."

With this "new" sense of self, I graduated college torn. While I was excited for the next chapter and the (apparent) freedom of adulthood, I dreaded the life I'd signed up for without knowing who I am.

On my first day as an investment banking analyst in New York City, I looked around and asked, "Is this really it?" I felt convinced I'd "made it"—people told me that too—and yet I felt lied to.

At the time, I thought the inner descent was "done." I couldn't have been further from the truth. That stretch of my life was Hell. Imagine waking up daily knowing you have to be who you're not. How much can the soul take?

On December 12th, 2021, during a bus ride back from Boston, I asked:

“What the fuck am I doing with my life?”

The redeeming part about existential crises is that you can only go up. And as Dante emerged from Hell, I "emerged to see—once more—the stars." I remembered once more my aliveness. My truth.

This felt sense of aliveness has shaped my life since then. Not necessarily bringing me anywhere, but rather, always back home — to who I've always been.

And perhaps that's what this journey really is, this human thing. To seek the deepest expression of aliveness — to walk each other home.