I Confidently Believe That I Am Lost

As I'm sitting down to write this, I'm already having trouble gathering my thoughts. I'm also not sure if this is what I want to write or if anything makes sense anymore.

This year has been an interesting one, so far. Not bad, but not extraordinary. It's not quite an echo back to last year—a lot of good stuff happened, but it was mostly not-so-great.

I guess, what I mean is that 2019 has just been okay. It started off with promise. I felt better than I did coming out of the last year. I was excited. There were so many things that I had looked forward to doing. Of course, I still have an interest in doing a lot of those things. I just mentally and emotionally feel weird. I don't know, I'm in a strange place and it's extremely hard to explain.

There were days when I felt unstoppable. Days when I would tell myself that "it could be worse" and it would be true. It could be worse. That's not the important part, though. I'm not gonna pretend that what I'm going through is insignificant. In my head, it's the only thing that matters.

I actually have a memory from earlier in the year when a friend of mine posted a song on their Instagram Story. Now, everyone should know of my connection to music. It might not be easy for me to express how I'm feeling in person, but I can send you a few songs that explain my emotions a little better.

Anyway, this friend posted "When The Party's Over" by Billie Eilish. I'm a huge fan of Billie, and that song is one of her best—maybe even her best. It also hurts, like a lot. It's incredibly sad and I had spent so many nights listening to it last year. I sympathized with my friend, knowing exactly how he was feeling.

But in that moment... I realized that I hadn't listened to that song at all this year.

Obviously, I will have to. It's gonna be on her upcoming album—it's inevitable. But I thought about it, and I hadn't had the urge to listen to it. It hadn't come up when I shuffled my music and I never chose to hear it. For some reason, I found this instance incredibly powerful. This song that I had played over and over again because it defined my year and how I was feeling—I wasn't feeling anymore.

It's still a really good song. I love it, but I'm gonna wait to listen to it again. I figured that if I could get through the entire month without hearing it, then it would mean something. I don't know if that makes sense to anyone else, but it somehow it's enough for me.

The shift happened unsuspectingly. A few weeks in, I was ready to take the year on. I was telling everyone that I was having a good year, and I thought that I was allowed to feel some sort of contentment.

This made me think of another song from an artist that everyone is probably tired of hearing me talk about. The song "Fallingwater" by Maggie Rogers, which was the definitive song of my 2018, begins with the line "Hold on, I thought that I was doing so well." I was 100 percent feeling that. I thought everything was under control. I thought I had my shit together. I thought this was my year, and then almost immediately everything just came crashing down.

And without any warning.

Okay, maybe that's not true. I had felt like something was missing from my life. Perhaps, "missing" isn't the right adjective. I guess, I just thought I needed something. I don't know where it came from, exactly. I've talked to so many people about it.

I've been lonely. And part of me knows what I mean by it, but the other part is in some sort of denial. I think I want to be with someone, but I also might just want to be surrounded by a group of loving people. It would make sense, since one of those things was stripped away from me quite recently. Perhaps, finding a large group of friends is the solution.

But it would also make sense that I want to be liked—we all want to be liked. Sadly, I don't consider myself a relationship person. I think that an old version of me would consider himself a "hopeless romantic," or something adjacent.

Now, that I've been through the ringer, I definitely can't see myself with one person. I've said this a few times, but I don't quite believe in the concept of marriage. I've never seen a positive representation

of it from the people in my life. That being said, it is for some people. I support that. You do you. I'm not getting married, though.

Recently, I've been using this quote with my friends. "I don't know what I want." And that relates to practically every part of my life. I really just don't know what I want. Maybe I did at some point, but it changes so frequently that it's easier to just say that I really don't fucking know.

Still, right now, I do have a "want." I want someone to love me or make me feel less lonely. This idea sparked when I was having a conversation with a friend over dinner on New Year's Eve. She told me that she felt like she wanted to be with someone, knowing she was definitely not the relationship type. She said she doesn't want a girlfriend, but someone to do girlfriend things with and fill that space without attaching the title.

And that resonated with me. I texted her a week or two after and I discussed my feelings on the matter. I don't think I want a boyfriend, but for someone to fill that boyfriend space.

With this new "want" in my life, I thought to myself, "how does one find a boyfriend thing?" I've heard about people meeting people online and on apps, but those were usually for quick hookups and non-love related things.

I had a few conversations with my friends, and literally every single one of them said no. Every person I talked to said not to do that, without hesitation. I heard a multitude of different reasons, but there was a general consensus that it wouldn't be good for me. Knowing my confusion and unusual openness, there was no telling what trouble I would get into. That was enough for me to steer clear of that route.

One conversation in particular, stood out to me. It was another dinner conversation. (Side note: I had mac and cheese of some sort during both dinners.) But I told my friend that I was feeling lonely, and admittedly, she wasn't one to care too much for social interaction. She brought up the difference between being lonely and alone. She is perfectly comfortable being alone, and I understand that. She also brought up a song that we both knew, "Confidently Lost" by Sabrina Claudio. The very first line of the song is

"I'm alone, but I'm not lonely."

This actually connected to another very important instance...

You know those New Year's trends where if you listen to a specific song at a certain time, then when the New Year comes, some shit happens? I think you hear a specific line, or whatever. It's usually to be funny. There's also the idea of picking out your song to start the year. I like to leave it up to chance. I shuffle all of my music and I see what happens. I not only do this for the new year, but to end the previous one.

To be fair, I was in the club at the end of the year. The final song was Shakira, I think. So, before I met up with my friends, I was listening to my own music and the last song I heard was an older, more obscure song, "Believe In Me" by Demi Lovato. Another known fact, I've always been a huge Demi fan—I even have "Stay Strong" tattooed on my wrists, for many different reasons, but that's a story for another time.

"Believe In Me," is the final song from her first record, so it was during her Disney days, but listening to the lyrics today, I think that it's more pertinent to who I am right now than when I listened in middle school. I've always felt an attachment to Demi's music, but listening to this particular song just struck a chord with me. It's hard to single out any of the lyrics because I truthfully believe that it is very well-written. But I ended 2018 hearing:

"Not gonna be afraid. I'm going to wake up feeling beautiful, today. And know that I'm okay. 'Cause everyone's perfect in unusual ways. So you see, now, now I believe in me."

So, going into 2019 I felt a lot of promise. I was believing in my capabilities and I thought I was comfortable in who I am.

After that night, I was leaving my friend's house and I put my music on shuffle and the official first song of 2019 for me was "Confidently Lost" by Sabrina Claudio. I didn't think too much of it, at first. It's a beautiful song and I enjoyed seeing the artist live last year, but could it really pertain to my life?

Then when I was speaking with my friend, it finally came together. I was lost. I was definitely lost. The fact that "by chance," my first song was this one, and I was having those lonely feelings that are mentioned in the first line of the song and my friend used it as her example—it just made sense to me. You know, the fact that nothing made sense.

I didn't know what the fuck I was doing.

And then this week happened. Nothing really went as expected. Some of that being a positive, I would like to be more spontaneous. But I also felt exceptionally misguided. I wasn't home most of the week. I spent a few nights at a co-worker's place—not because I had to, just because I'm a fucking mess. There wasn't anything particularly wrong at home besides the usual, I just didn't come back a few times, for some reason. My phone died and I didn't show up to something that I said I would. I called up a friend of mine because I was having a panic attack.

Oh, and I had a breakdown, or two.

I couldn't really make sense of it, but I think everything finally caught up with me. All of the suppressed feelings and stress leading up to this moment, I finally let it all out. I never actually gave myself space to cry about the things that bothered me from the previous year. And I thought that I had successfully let it go in another way, but to be honest, sometimes you just need to cry it out.

You need to let yourself breakdown and lose control and fall into a million pieces. You really learn a lot about yourself and about the things you need when you start to pick everything back up.

I had another conversation with that same friend post-breakdown, and we discussed how being "lost" didn't necessarily have to be a bad thing. Firstly, to be self-aware of the fact that you don't know what the fuck is going on, already says a lot. I'm confident in the fact that I don't know where I'm going or what I want, but I believe that I will find it.

It'll just take some time.