Right now, I don’t know.

Not in the way people expect. Not in the clean, confident way where someone can list their roles, their accomplishments, or their purpose and feel anchored by it. I feel untethered. Like I’ve spent so much of my life adapting, surviving, explaining, enduring, and rebuilding that I never had the space to simply exist and become someone without pressure or damage shaping the outcome.

There are parts of me I recognize. I know I am observant. I know I am resilient. I know I am capable of carrying more than most people ever see. But those qualities were forged in response to circumstances I did not choose. They tell the story of what I survived, not necessarily who I am underneath it.

I feel lost because I built versions of myself around the people and environments I was trying to survive. I trusted the wrong people. I stayed where I should have left. I invested in relationships that diminished me instead of strengthening me. And over time, it becomes hard to separate who I am from what I endured.

Sometimes I feel like a failure, not because I lacked strength, but because I kept hoping people would meet me where I stood, and they didn’t.

So who am I?

I am someone in the process of finding out. Someone peeling back the adaptations, the defenses, the roles I had to play, and trying to discover what remains when I am no longer defined by survival, disappointment, or endurance.

I am not finished yet.