I have spent a very large part of my life trying to understand myself.
Why I feel so much.
Why I think so much.
Why certain things can hurt so fucking deeply, even when I know they probably shouldn’t.
And maybe I’ve been looking for the answer in the wrong place.
Because it isn’t really about the people who have come and gone from my life.
It’s about the younger version of me who learned far too early that he had to take care of himself.
The one who needed attention but never really knew how to ask for it.
The one who wanted to be seen, but learned not to be a burden.
The one who had feelings far too big to carry alone, and somehow tried to carry them anyway.
I think so much of my adult life has been that person trying to go back and give him what he was missing.
Sometimes through other people.
Sometimes through relationships.
Sometimes by trying to be funny, strong, needed, or interesting enough to never risk being forgotten.
And I haven’t always understood that.
I’ve thought there was something wrong with me.
That I was too sensitive.
Too intense.
Too analytical.
Too much.
But I’m beginning to understand that maybe it was never about being too much.
Maybe it was just a very small person carrying far too much inside him, with far too little help understanding what to do with it.
I’m not angry anymore.
Not at my parents.
Not at my exes.
Not at the people who couldn’t give me what I needed.
People are people. Everyone does the best they can with whatever they’re carrying themselves.
And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life holding anyone responsible for what happened when I was young.
I just want to stop holding myself responsible for it.
So this is my goodbye.
Not to life.
Not to the people I’ve loved.
But to the need to keep making that little boy prove that he is worth staying for.
He doesn’t have to prove anything anymore.
He already is.
And I’m going to take care of him now.
For real.
So if I disappear from social media for a while, from the noise, from the need to show what I’m doing and who I am, it isn’t because I’ve disappeared.
It’s because I’m finally trying to become someone that the younger version of me could have felt safe with.
And maybe that’s what growing up is really about.
Eventually becoming the person you needed when you were little.
That’s the person I’m going to become.
And everything else can com