I Was Never Going Nowhere

Feeling the thump of bass in my bones from the blaring music, I felt alive. My ears rang from the songs playing far too loudly, but I didn’t care. I had no care in the world. My foot on the gas didn’t feel heavy or tired; it felt only effortless. My foot was as committed to getting where I was going, and to who I was chasing, as my heart. I was chasing freedom. I had changed my entire life and direction in just a few months. I was no longer held hostage by the restraints of my inabilities or insecurity. I was about to become brand new.

I sang out loud as I drove. I never used to sing, not out of insecurity, but because singing felt childish. How could someone be so moved by a song that they want to shout the lyrics alongside the ghost of an artist? My mother used to crank the volume to its limit and sing so loudly in the car when I was a kid that I had to plug my ears. I used to think she did it just to annoy me. And maybe, in some small way, she did. But today, as my knuckles soaked in the sun cupping the steering wheel, I felt the music in my chest. I understood, finally, where the celebration came from.

The music vibrated against my back as I kept driving. I kept it loud, ironic, since I was running from silence. I had built a well-architected life. I went to college, where I was bored to tears, but got a degree so I could get a good job. I got that job. I rented a cute little apartment beside a lake, I had a dog, and I met with my social circle regularly. I was checking every box society handed me. And I did it all with the odds stacked against me from the start. I did it humbly, without fighting anyone but myself. By all external standards, I was composed, successful, exquisite, even.

But I couldn’t stop moving. I rushed from task to task, goal to goal, desperate to drown out the stillness. Not because I loved progress, but because I was terrified of what I might feel if I slowed down. I could build beautiful roadmaps for my next milestone, always quick to explain what I was working on. But really, I was creating distractions to avoid the obvious: I was completely lost.

Where the hell was I going?

I thought accomplishing the things I was told I’d never do would leave behind some kind of breadcrumb trail I could follow to purpose. I was wrong. The silence was deafening. There was no map, not unless I defined it first. And I didn’t know how. I was lost, but too proud to admit it. So I kept moving.

What do you do when you know you’re lost, but too bored, or too afraid to care?

I was dazed. Confused by the life I had built. Was it meant to be productive but hollow? Were the walls of my home built to echo? On paper, I always had a plan. But it felt like guessing. Like grasping at straws. Was I building a map, and just too close to see the shape of it? So I pressed on. If confusion never had my permission to exist, then it had no right to stop me.

Here’s where the story gets cliché. At that great job I earned because I followed the steps society outlined, I met a man.

I didn’t meet him in a conference room full of loud lunches, or passing in the hallway, or while spilling my tea in the office café. I met him over a workplace email.

I’ve always had a thing for smart people. Turns out, I had an even bigger thing for people who were smarter than me but didn’t need to prove it, and people who taught instead of boasted. He lived across the country. We weren’t friends. We weren’t co-workers in the traditional sense. We were just two people, thousands of miles apart, solving a problem.

Quick calls for strategy turned into long ones. Then into weekend texts. For the first time in my life, I felt it, the tug, the pull, and the noise. I no longer felt tied to what was next or how I would get there, but rather, where was this person, and could I be where he is? The loss I felt was metaphorical, but finding a real destination on a map ignited a sense of urgency I hadn’t felt in years. Not desperation but clarity. It was the kind of clarity that burns away the fog, sharp and warm and terrifying all at once.

The world got loud.

I’ll spare the story from getting too romantic, but I packed up my life and moved across the country. I didn’t know if this was another self-made distraction, another milestone to mask the boredom. But for the first time, I didn’t feel desperate to define it. I didn’t need to cling to a promotion like a life raft or over-plan a group trip to mute the quiet. I just felt driven.

For the first time, I could see the path. I wasn’t lost. Not yet.

I’d probably get lost again once I crossed into a new state. My childhood was spent in California hospital rooms. I had never seen the other side of Oregon. People around me cried. They called me stupid or brave. Most couldn’t decide which.

But here’s the thing: battling through your entire life gives you survival skills. If I got to where I was going and it turned out empty, if the tug vanished, the love dissolved, I could get in my car and drive the three days home. I could start over. I had laid so many roads beneath my feet, even if they were distractions, that I knew how to rebuild.

I built myself up so carefully out of fear of crumbling. But when the decision arose that could destroy my life, I didn’t run. I leaned in. Why not?

Maybe, being lost is the point.

Maybe the unknown is just a wide net waiting to catch us. Being lost can get you where you need to be.