I have been searching for a long time now.
Searching...
I have searched long enough to watch my desires take many, many forms. I have watched those desires fixate on numerous objects and outcomes.
I watched those desires shift to something new the moment I could finally grasp the object of my desires. Was I looking for something that I could never attain?
If only I could just try harder, smarter, faster, something.
and I did become harder, smarter, faster, something...
anything. I became anything and everything. I became the best conscious coach I could imagine. I became a grandmaster support in Overwatch. I became a cutthroat business consultant who could do anything. I could create the app, manage the technical architecture, do the analytics, create the website, create the marketing plan. I could even create the content myself. I became an amazing photographer. I became an amazing dancer.
and yet I was nothing. Still not enough, still cannot grasp that fleeting feeling that escapes me the moment I get near.
This kind of chase has ensued my entire life. It had been normalized, taking many forms in school, work, relationships, sex, drugs, music, photography, etc.
It never really occurred to me that you do not have to search. You do not have to look.
but I was always looking, looking for something, anything to fill this void inside of me.
It only became more troublesome when I got into photography. I could see this kind of pattern corrupting my love for photography as I follow photographers that photograph pretty faces, pretty forms.
My news feed starts to fill up with pretty women and skinny bodies. The algorithm thinks it knows me huh?... I try to train the algorithm otherwise to no avail. No matter how many times I hit "not interested", it keeps showing up.
So I give up and surrender to this noise. Why does my mind fixate on these forms?
I traced the desire back, deeper, deeper...
Of course, the boy who was the most attached to these forms was the same boy who hated his own form. The boy who would fixate on money and nice speakers and a nice camera and nice bodies and and and and
would be the same boy who could never get his own form to be enough. A familiar memory ensues. It is me staring in the mirror at my own rib cage. I am a young boy asking God why I had to be cursed with such a vessel. Driven to take power into his own hands, he decides to do something about it.
and that single decision would become the roots to support many, many branches of desires to try to experience a meaningful life despite...
despite this form.
Well I traced the many branches of desires until I found the boy inside of me and brought him to the present. You know what I have to say to the world and its perceptions of my form?
It is not my fucking responsibility.
and to that boy, I am sorry it has taken me so, so long to come back to you. I am sorry my egotistical ways have prevented me from seeing what was in front of me all along.
so let's try again. Let's pursue all of these crazy dreams together. However, this time, let's just do it as ourselves.