Gone Astray
Visual by Amber Cottell
33 iPhone notes written with tears and tired eyes. 8 books read in summer silence. 5 new social media accounts created out of a longing for community. 1 quit job. Countless purchases of books and clothes and food and music.
My state of mind since mid-March has been one of both consolation and experimentation—attempts to find my way back into my old skin, while at the same time, seeking out a new one.
I had already begun feeling like a confused and partially lost version of myself when I started community college without so much as an acquaintance—as my friends scattered between new states and unfamiliar lives. So in lieu of the human attachment I craved, I latched onto plans for my future instead. I worked part-time to save for a better college, and spent most of my time planning a summer study trip to Japan. Everything that came out of my mouth for months was Japan and next summer and liberal arts school. So when COVID hit, leading to me temporarily losing my primary job, having to cancel going to Japan and restructure all of my college transfer plans, I was overwhelmed with the acute realization that I no longer had any idea where my life was headed. Within a matter of weeks, what I had made my personality for the past six months had no purchase whatsoever—and I began feeling incredibly lost.
My first and immediate response to this was to do things that I loved that I simply hadn’t had the time for, between school and work: drawing, collaging, graphic design, reading for pleasure—I was desperate to regain some sense of identity. I wrote notes in my phone detailing my hunger for high school and the previous summer; for childhood, and friends I barely spoke to anymore—always a version of me that I perceived as happier, and more in touch with her emotions. In my own head, this is what I recognized as the “normal me,” someone I have been trying to revert back into since I stepped foot in my first college classroom. Before, I felt that if I could only go through with my 2020 plans, I would feel like that girl again. But just as these intentions were swept away by the tsunami of changes that came about in that first week of quarantine, so was this version of myself.
No longer could I pretend that living in a different country short-term or transferring to my dream college could magically make me me again—there was no default anymore, as virtually nothing in my life was what it usually was. I became a mix of what I perceived as an old version of myself and someone who was a complete stranger to me. At the same time as I was consuming media from my childhood and maintaining my poor eating habits, I was swallowing embarrassment to apply to zines and calling the bank when I needed to. Almost as abruptly as I lost myself to impotence, I suddenly began to feel as though I were the leader on an expedition into the unknown, rather than the shipwrecked girl drifting away from shore that I felt before.
I toyed with my fashion, social media presence, and assertiveness. I prioritized different things, and reflected on past relationships (both platonic and romantic). Building only from my core values and interests, I became a patchwork of different skins, painted and painted over, and painted over again. My identity was still muddled, but my new “normal” was beginning to be regarded as a pensive look, a furrowed brow, a tentative nod: a me determined to explore. Although I’m not sure anyone around me noticed this shift, it did not slip by me without significant noteworthiness.
Before college and certainly before the pandemic, if an opportunity arose for me to change in any capacity—in personality, reputation, or time commitment—I wouldn’t take it. I would freeze; I would imagine myself in the most pristine, idealized version of the scenario—and then I would imagine the loss that would come as a result. It didn’t even have to be anything harmful to me—it just needed to be the most fleeting of thoughts, telling me that something I was comfortable with—used to—would be lost, and I would refuse the opportunity. No matter how badly I wanted to accept, I never would.
However, with the disappearance of any familiarity, I felt I had nothing to lose. My attitude towards any opportunity became, Why not? Desire took the wheel, and steered me into the territory of doing something about it. I wanted to be a better version of myself—more organized, more confident, more successful, more educated, more responsible, more. I felt so unsure of how to do this, but the difference was that now I felt I could really try. After realizing that there was no longer any normal to cling to—let alone fall back into—I began to feel more than free to actively seek out a version of myself that feels right—not familiar.
In doing so for the past five months, I've come to dance to a kind of spontaneous rhythm—picking out random books from my dad’s shelf to skim through, spending breaks from the computer trying out different mini-hobbies; washing my face before eating breakfast one day, and after the next. Exploration has become the girl next door, with her pretty eyes and charming smile; the love interest that will inevitably make my life brighter.
But getting to this point where I finally believe that feeling lost is a blessing in disguise has been anything but simple. I cried for weeks, every night. I sat in silence wondering why I wasn't the same girl I was two months ago. I paused and hesitated and let overthinking be my chauffeur for the day; I began good habits and broke them again. The vulnerability that has been required for me to see change as a chance to turn what felt wrong into something that feels right has been immense. Even with the leaps and bounds I've taken since the start, I still feel confused and uncertain; everything I do is still with wobbly legs. Straying from the path that I had come to know with its shadows and decay—the sounds of distant freedom my only consolation—has been difficult. It has led me to become comfortable with not being comfortable, and treat my feeling lost as the default me.
In this way, I have become open to transition into whoever I want to be, whenever change arises. Although I still have yet to know what person I am since the pandemic hit, as I search for a new plot of land every day—tasting the air and touching the earth and getting to know what it means not to know one from the other—I am slowly learning.