I've Lived Many Lives

I am forty-three years old. If you measure that in days, it comes to 15,695.

That number startled me the first time I sat with it. Not because it felt large, but because it felt accurate. I haven't lived one long life. I've lived many short ones, stacked quietly on top of each other, each ending without ceremony, each beginning without announcement.

Lives end in ordinary ways. A door closes. A call doesn't come. Someone stops choosing you. You stop choosing yourself.

And then—without permission—another life begins.

Life is often described as a line, but that has never been my experience. Mine has been a series of rooms. Some bright. Some narrow. Some I stayed in far too long. Others I left the moment I realized the air was thinning. When I look back, I don't see a timeline. I see atmospheres.

There were days when everything felt possible. I remember the sensation clearly—an openness in the chest, a lightness behind the eyes. I remember believing that effort would be met with reward, that honesty would be enough, that love—once earned—would stay. Those days weren't naïve. They were sincere. And sincerity is always vulnerable.

There were also days marked by loss. Not dramatic loss, not always the kind people rally around, but the quieter kind. The loss of direction. The loss of belonging. The loss of who I thought I was becoming. Some losses arrived suddenly; others crept in slowly, disguised as endurance. I stayed. I tried harder. I explained myself one more time. Until eventually I realized I was grieving something that had already left.

Failure has visited me often. Sometimes loudly, sometimes as a whisper that followed me for years. I've failed publicly and privately. I've failed people I cared about. I've failed ideals I once defended. I've failed myself in ways that took time to even admit. Failure, when it stays long enough, reshapes your posture. It teaches you where you brace unnecessarily, where you hold your breath.

Breakups don't only happen in relationships. I've had breakups with careers, with cities, with identities I outgrew but didn't yet know how to release. I've had breakups with versions of myself that once kept me safe. Those are the hardest to leave, because they worked—until they didn't.

Pain has been a frequent companion. Sometimes sharp, sometimes dull, sometimes so familiar I forgot it wasn't meant to be permanent. I've learned that pain doesn't always come from cruelty. Often it comes from misalignment—from staying somewhere your soul has already packed its bags. Pain is not proof of weakness. Often it's proof that you've been listening longer than you've been honoring.

Rejection has shaped me more than success ever could. I've been rejected by people, institutions, communities, and imagined futures. I've also rejected myself—preemptively, defensively, convincingly. I learned how to disappear before others could decide I didn't belong. I learned how to sabotage my own reputation when standing fully present felt too exposed. Sometimes I did it unconsciously. Other times, with precision.

What I didn't understand at the time was that every rejection was quietly asking the same question: Who are you without permission?

There have been triumphs, too. They rarely arrived as fireworks. More often they came as stillness. As moments when I realized I no longer needed to prove anything. As evenings where I could sit alone and not feel the urge to escape myself. As mornings where the weight had lifted just enough for breath to return naturally.

Memory is strange. It doesn't preserve events so much as sensations. I remember how certain seasons felt in my body. I remember the heaviness of certain years, the clarity of others. I remember the days when survival was the only achievement—and how even that felt like a quiet victory.

If you're expecting a lesson here, there isn't one. Life didn't teach me how to win. It taught me how to stay. How to leave. How to return. It taught me that identity is temporary, but presence is durable. That meaning isn't found in the avoidance of pain, but in the willingness to remain intact while moving through it.

I no longer believe in a perfect version of life waiting at the end of endurance. I believe in attention. I believe in choosing again. I believe in letting lives end without turning them into failures. A life can be complete even if it was painful. A chapter can be necessary even if you'd never revisit it.

When I look at the images that mark these 15,695 days—faces, places, objects, rooms—I don't see a highlight reel. I see evidence. Proof that I was here. Proof that I felt deeply. Proof that I survived moments I once thought would undo me.

I've lived many lives. Each one shaped me. None of them finished me.

And I suspect that's the point.

There is still time. Not for perfection, but for presence. Not for correction, but for coherence. Not for becoming someone else, but for finally allowing the pieces to stand next to each other without apology.

This is not the story of overcoming. It's the story of continuing.

And for now, that is enough.