I Thought I’d Be Further By Now

I thought I would feel more settled by now.

Not enlightened. Not finished. Just steadier. As though adulthood would arrive with an internal click — a sense of arrival I could finally rest inside. But instead, I’m here: hovering between versions of myself, fluent in self-awareness, still hesitant to choose.

For a long time, I thought this uncertainty meant something was wrong with me. That if I were more grounded, more mature, more evolved, I would know where to live, who to love, and how to settle into a life that made sense on paper and in my body.

Instead, I hovered.

Between countries.

Between versions of myself.

Between wanting stability and wanting more.

There are options everywhere. Good ones. And that’s part of the problem. When nothing is obviously wrong, it becomes easier to stay undecided. To mistake possibility for progress. To call hesitation “being thoughtful” when, underneath it, there is fear.

I told myself I was waiting for clarity. Being patient. Responsible.

But I’m starting to wonder if clarity is just the word I use when I don’t want to risk being wrong.

Because choosing would make me visible — to myself and to others. It would mean attaching my name to a direction. Letting go of the comfort of potential and accepting the limits of reality. And limits are confronting. They force you to live inside the life you pick, rather than the ones you imagine.

There’s a quiet pressure humming in the background. The sense that I should be further along. More anchored. Less uncertain. But “further” implies a shared destination, and I’m no longer convinced there is one. Just a series of decisions we either make consciously — or inherit by default.

What unsettles me most is this:

I don’t know where patience ends and avoidance begins. I don’t know whether this in-between is an honest pause, or a sophisticated way of staying uncommitted. Of keeping my options open so I don’t have to grieve the lives I won’t live.

But staying unchosen has a cost too.

At some point, reflection turns into delay.

Self-protection turns into self-erasure.

And waiting stops being neutral — it becomes a decision of its own.

Eventually, I had to admit something uncomfortable: I wasn’t confused — I was unfinished.

I wasn’t afraid of change. I was afraid of choosing one life before I had properly lived the others. Afraid that if I settled too early, something in me would stay quietly restless, tapping at the walls of a life that looked right but didn’t feel fully chosen.

So I stopped asking myself where I should end up, and asked a harder question instead:

What is still unresolved in me?

The answer wasn’t subtle.

I still wanted to explore — not endlessly, not chaotically, but honestly. I wanted to meet myself through experience, not imagination. To choose my future without the ache of unfinished longing. To stop inheriting decisions by default and start making them consciously.

That’s when I made a contract with myself.

Not a promise to figure everything out.

Not a rebellion against settling.

But an agreement to give this in-between its own chapter — with intention, boundaries, and an end date.

To stop drifting and start choosing, even if the choice is temporary. To live fully inside the season I’m in, rather than half-living while waiting for the next one.

This isn’t about running away from stability.

It’s about earning it.

Because settling down doesn’t mean much if you’re still wondering who you could have been somewhere else. And I don’t want a life built on what ifs I was too afraid to face.

I still don’t have a final destination.

But I’ve made peace with the unfolding.

I’ve given this in-between a name, a shape, and my full attention.

Not as a delay — but as devotion.

Not as escape — but as a promise to live honestly.

I’m choosing the life that meets me halfway.

The one that asks me to show up before I’m sure.

And maybe that’s how we become —

not by waiting to be ready,

but by moving gently forward

and letting ourselves be changed.