A Season of Questions

Lately, I have been living with more questions than answers. I don't particularly want to be seen right now. I don't want to be heard. I don't want to explain myself, make conversation, perform happiness, or convince anyone that I'm okay. There is a part of me that wants to become very quiet and stay there for a while. Not because I have nothing to say. Maybe because I have too much to say, and I don't know what deserves words yet.

I've been questioning people more than I used to. Their intentions. Their love. The things they say compared with the things they do. I find myself wondering what is genuine and what isn't. Sometimes I wonder if I've become too guarded. Other times I wonder if I'm simply seeing things more clearly now.

I love deeply. I give deeply. Maybe that's part of why disappointment can feel so heavy. When you have spent so much of your life loving people, showing up for people, forgiving people and trying to understand people, there comes a point when you begin asking who has been doing the same for you. I don't know the answer to that either.

Family has brought questions of its own. My relationship with my mother is strained, and there are wounds there that I don't know what to do with anymore. There are things from my childhood that I thought getting older would somehow make easier to understand. Instead, adulthood has sometimes given me the language to recognize what I couldn't explain when I was younger.

There is a particular kind of hurt that comes from wanting someone to hear your truth and realizing they may never be willing to sit with it. I have wanted accountability. I have wanted an apology. I have wanted conversations where I could say, this hurt me, without the conversation becoming about something else or simply ending because what I had to say was uncomfortable.

Sometimes I wonder if I truly know my mother. That is a difficult thing to admit. How can someone be part of your entire life and still leave you wondering who they really are? How do you forgive something that has never been acknowledged? Can you love someone and still accept that the relationship may never become what you needed it to be?

I don't know.

I've been questioning religion too. I was raised in church, and for a long time there were beliefs, traditions and expectations that were simply part of life. But years ago, something began changing within me. Spirituality started feeling more honest to me than religion. More personal. More intimate. Less about what I was told I should believe and more about what my soul actually believes.

Even now, I have questions about that. I don't feel the need to put a perfect label on it. I just know that my spiritual life feels deeply personal, and I'm allowing myself to question things I once thought I wasn't supposed to question.

Maybe faith can have questions too.

Then there are questions about the life around me. I've been thinking about traveling more. I've thought about relocating. Sometimes I imagine what it would feel like to wake up somewhere completely different, look outside a different window, walk unfamiliar streets and experience a life that doesn't look exactly like the one I already know.

But I don't know if I need somewhere new. I don't necessarily feel lost. That's what makes all of this difficult to explain.

In many ways, I feel as though I have arrived. I know myself more intimately than I ever have. I know what I value. I know what peace feels like. I know what drains me. I know what I can no longer pretend doesn't hurt. I know that I don't need to be surrounded by people to feel whole.

So I find myself asking another question:

If I know myself, why am I questioning so much of the life around me?

Maybe I am still finding myself. Maybe I'm not. Maybe knowing yourself doesn't mean you stop questioning. Maybe knowing yourself is exactly what makes certain questions impossible to ignore.

Even some of the things that once comforted me feel different. Cooking has always been therapeutic for me. There was something about being in the kitchen, preparing something slowly and feeding the people I love that settled me. It was one of those ordinary things that could bring me back to myself.

Lately, even food has become complicated. I question what I'm eating. I question what's in it. I question where it came from and what we've normalized putting into our bodies. Something that once felt comforting now sometimes makes me want to pull away from it completely.

Another question. Another layer.

There are days when my world feels incredibly small. There are very few things that feel uncomplicated to me right now. The love I have for my son does. The love I have for my puppy does. Those loves feel simple in a season when almost everything else seems to require examination.

And perhaps that's why I've wanted so much quiet. I'm tired. Not necessarily the kind of tired that sleep fixes. I'm tired of trying to understand people who don't try to understand me. Tired of questioning intentions. Tired of carrying conversations long after they've ended. Tired of trying to decide what deserves forgiveness, what deserves distance, what deserves another chance and what simply needs to be left where it is.

Some days the walls feel as though they're closing in, and I want space from all of it. Space to travel. Space to think. Space to breathe. Space to exist without having to explain what I'm feeling while I'm still trying to understand it myself.

I don't know whether I need a trip, a move, solitude, a difficult conversation, a different relationship with certain people, or simply time.

I don't know.

And maybe that's the most honest thing I can write right now. There is a temptation to end something like this with a lesson. To wrap all these questions into a beautiful conclusion about growth, healing or becoming. But I don't have one.

I don't know if I'm becoming someone new. I don't know if I'm rediscovering someone who has always been here. I don't even know if this season is about becoming at all.

Maybe I've arrived.

Maybe arriving doesn't mean everything suddenly makes sense. Maybe you can know yourself and still question your surroundings. Maybe you can love people and question your relationships with them. Maybe you can believe in something greater and still question what you were taught. Maybe you can be grateful for your life while quietly wondering whether parts of it need to change.

For now, I am trying not to force answers simply because uncertainty makes me uncomfortable. I'm listening. I'm paying attention to what feels heavy and what feels light. To what gives me peace and what takes it away. To the questions that keep returning no matter how many times I try to put them down.

Maybe the answers will come. Maybe some won't.

Right now, I'm simply in a season of questions.

And for once, I'm going to let that be enough.