Still Unfolding

I am about to step into my late twenties, and everyone around me talks about this age like it is some kind of checkpoint. A point where you are supposed to have answers. Stability. A partner. A plan. Something to show for all the years you have lived.

And in a way, I do. I look at my life and I know I have done well. I worked hard. I survived things people will never know about. I built myself from scraps and silence and late nights where I almost gave up. Professionally, I have done more than I once dreamed of. The boy I used to be would look at me now with wide eyes and pride. He would whisper, You really made it.

But when I sit with myself in the quiet, I can feel the gaps. The parts of me I never learned how to carry. Emotionally, I feel distant from the world. I care, but I care from far away. I reach out, then I pull back. Every time someone gets close, something in me panics. Like love is a fire and I have only ever known how to treat flames with fear.

And physically, I am here. But also not here. I move through days like a passenger in my own life. I smile. I work. I achieve. But inside, I feel like I am watching everything as if it belongs to someone else.

I keep asking myself if what I have is enough. Am I enough. Should I be settling now. Should I be opening my chest to someone and letting them see the parts I have kept hidden for years. Or should I keep protecting myself the way I always have. Should I wait for something gentler. Or accept that love might never look the way I imagined it.

It is strange. To be proud and lost at the same time. To feel successful in one part of your life but hollow in another. To know you are growing yet still feel stuck in places no one else can see.

But maybe this is what the late twenties really are. Not a checkpoint, not a deadline, not a race. Just a season where you realise the world will not slow down for you, so you have to slow yourself down. A season where you finally look inward and ask the questions you avoided for years. What do I want. What do I need. What kind of love feels like home. And am I ready for it.

And the truth is, you do not have to settle just because time is passing. You do not have to force yourself into something you are not ready for. You do not have to hand your heart to someone just to prove you can. The right things do not need rushing.

Maybe this chapter of your life is not about finding someone. Maybe it is about finding yourself again. The version of you that existed before the heartbreak, before the doubts, before the world told you how you should live.

Maybe you are allowed to take your time.

Maybe being emotionally unavailable is not who you are, but who you became while surviving.

Maybe you are not in another state.

Maybe you are just somewhere tender and temporary.

And maybe turning another year older is not about settling.

Maybe it is about finally choosing yourself.

Because when love comes, you will know.

You will not need to beg your heart to open.

It will open on its own.