I Didn't Know I Was Lost Until I Found Myself Again

Disintegration never happened to me.

Not one of those dramatic steps.

Not one of those stormy nights on the bathroom floor.

Not one of those frenzied calls or rock-bottom realizations.

I just faded.

Faded bit by bit and moment-by-moment until I became a shade in my own life—smiling when I had to, answering with "I’m good" like a script I never questioned. My days were stitched together with routines, worn thin like a fabric pretending to be whole.

I thought that was living.

Wake up. Do what is expected. Stay busy enough not to hear the silence.

Sleep. Repeat.

The world calls that "being responsible."

I called it normal.

But I was acting—not living.

And the strange part?

I didn’t know I was lost.

'Cause no one tells you that you can vanish without leaving home.

It started slowly—though back then I would have never called it a start.

I stopped laughing from my belly.

I stopped picking up the phone just to talk to friends.

I began scrolling instead of talking.

I started replying to messages two days late with “Sorry, I’ve been swamped” when I hadn’t been.

Inside, small little things died a silent death.

My interest in art.

My love for hiking at sunrise.

My ability to sit and let silence fill the air without needing to distract myself with a screen.

My being was acting like a machine—punctual, polite, dependable.

Nobody cared there was something wrong with me.

Least of all, me.

For, with the slow creeping of emptiness, what you take for weakness you call maturity.

You confuse drift for stability.

You call it growing up.

One evening on a Tuesday, I stood in my kitchen, reheating some leftovers.

The microwave hummed. The screens of my phone flickered to life with unread texts.

And that's when I realized it—I can't remember the last time I felt anything with intensity.

Not happiness. Not sadness. Not thrill. Not even rage.

Just....static.

I sat down on the floor, right there by the microwave, and quietly spoke the words that shattered something deep within me:

"Where did I go?"

Not a cry for help. Not overly dramatic.

It was honest.

Excruciatingly honest.

Because I knew-I disappeared somewhere along the way. Not physically. Not socially. But spiritually. Emotionally. Mentally.

I had become a version of myself that looked good on paper but felt utterly empty in real life.

The return had no build-up; it was a somber, simple walk.

No headphones. No phone. Just me and the world I had chosen to ignore for months.

I walked throughout the neighborhood scheming past houses I never glanced at, trees I never thought to notice, and the sky I forgot to praise.

And in that stillness, something happened:

I felt there.

Not quite. Not clearly. But for the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn't just doing. I was being.

I kept on walking the day after. And the next.

Some days were filled with tears. Others- none.

Some days brought smiles directed at strangers.

Others gave birth to glances snuffed out in mirrors.

But I was present. Not for the world-for me.

I began to write - badly at first. Half sentences, disordered thoughts.

Gradually, clarity began to bow toward this mind a bit less clouded.

I bought paints and kept it to myself.

I danced in my sitting room one night in response to a song that cracked my chest open.

I called up an old friend and told him the truth when he asked, "How've you been?" I said, "Not okay. But better now."

They neither tried to 'fix' me.

They just listened.

Sometimes that's all we need.

The healing wasn't extravagant.

It was the most understated.

Tender.

Like sowing seeds in soil I thought to be barren.

It was in the way I allowed myself to sleep, free of guilt.

The way I said

unapologetically.

The way I opted for presence over perfection.

So one morning, weeks later, I stood at the mirror and in good faith said, "I see you." Not a version. Not a mask.

Me.

Not healed.

Not finished.

But here. Present. Whole, in the way only truth can ever make you whole.

And then I knew that...

I was not broken.

I was simply missing.

But I found myself again, not in a moment but breath by brave breath.

If you're reading this and feel numb, quiet, or disconnected, I want to tell you:

You're not being lazy.

You're not being dramatic.

You're not broken.

Maybe, like me, you're just missing from your own life.

But know this:

You can come back.

And upon your return...

You will come to realize that the softest kind of power there is is to remember who you are when the world forgot to ask.