All I can remind myself and anyone else on this journey, wherever you are on this journey, is that it's still worth it. You are worth it. Even if you've turned back again and again, you can always return and return again.

The reality is, some people never reach that threshold. Or they hit it and then turn back, because returning to yourself means a lot of change and grief, a lot of healing work that requires you to face your pain, your disappointment, your trauma, your complicity.

And maybe this is what it means to be human. That we get lost for most of our lives, get to some kind of threshold, and then spend the rest of it returning and returning to ourselves.

Because we want love, acceptance, and belonging, we spend most our lives trying to make ourselves what would fit in with others. And it isn't until much rejection, heartbreak, burnout, breakdowns later that we realize it was all meaningless if we can't be loved, accepted, belonged as ourselves.

It's hard because as soon as you're born, all the world conspires to take you away from who you were made to be.

It tells you why you're not enough and how you're too much and who you should be.