Notes From the In-Between
On growing up without rushing the process.
I have always imagined life as something that eventually settles.
When I was younger, I thought there would come a day when everything would finally make sense. My career would be established. My relationships would feel certain. My body would feel like home. My faith would be settled. My mind would be quieter. I would wake up one morning and realise that I had arrived.
I am not sure exactly where that idea came from. Maybe it is the stories we are told. Every film seems to end with someone arriving somewhere. They get the job. They find the love of their life. They make peace with their past. The credits roll before we ever have to ask what happens next. (sometimes we ask but since the answers are not clear we learned to fill in the gaps with the most optimistic options available to our minds)
Real life is far less interested in neat endings.
Over the last year, I have written about grief. About friendships changing. About work becoming more meaningful and more demanding. About trying to be authentic. About stress. About love. About my body remembering things my mind had almost forgotten. At first, they felt like separate essays. Different thoughts arriving at different times.
Looking back, I do not think they were different at all. I think I have been writing the same essay over and over again. I have been trying to understand what it means to grow up - I know how to pay bills and book doctor’s appointments. I know how to make difficult decisions and send difficult emails. That part of adulthood comes quicker than we expect.
But there is a part no one prepares you for…
The part where you realise that life is rarely one thing at a time. You can be deeply grateful for your life and completely overwhelmed by it. You can love your work and still wonder if you are giving too much of yourself away. You can be healing from one wound while another quietly opens. You can miss someone and know, with complete certainty, that you would not go back to the relationship you once had. You can feel hopeful about the future while mourning the past.
When I was younger, these things would have felt like contradictions. Now they simply feel like Thursday.
That has been one of the biggest surprises of adulthood for me. I thought growing up meant becoming more certain. Instead, it has meant becoming more comfortable holding two truths at the same time.
I no longer feel the need to solve every tension in my life. Sometimes both things are true.
There is another thing I have been thinking about.
We spend so much of our lives waiting to become the next version of ourselves that we forget to notice the person we already are.
We are always preparing for the next season.
When I get the promotion...
When I heal...
When I find love...
When I lose the weight...
When I make more money...
When life slows down...
It is always when.
As though the life we are living now is simply a waiting room for the one that really matters.
I wonder how much of our lives we miss because we are constantly looking ahead.
I do not think life is divided into clear chapters anymore. I think it is one long overlap. There are dreams being born while others are quietly ending. There are friendships becoming deeper while others slowly drift into memory. There are parts of you that are growing stronger while other parts are asking to be held with a little more gentleness.
Nothing arrives on cue. Nothing waits its turn.
Everything is happening all at once.
Maybe that is why I have become suspicious of the idea that we ever really “arrive.”
I do not think there is a version of adulthood where everything suddenly feels complete. I think every stage of life comes with its own questions. The questions simply change.
At twenty-three you wonder whether you are enough.
At twenty-nine you wonder whether the life you are building still fits the person you are becoming.
I suspect that at thirty-five there will be entirely different questions waiting for me.
I think that is the whole point…
Maybe we spend our entire lives meeting new versions of ourselves.
Some we recognise immediately.
Others take time.
For the next five weeks I will share my thoughts on the in-between, not to offer answers. I have fewer of those every year.
But to stay curious about this strange, beautiful middle we all seem to be living in. This place where grief and joy share the same table. Where ambition lives beside exhaustion. Where love changes shape. Where certainty becomes less important than honesty.
So come journey with me.
Yours Truly,
Oiza