This place you find yourself in, not somewhere you set off to but you've arrived here with an image that does not match a life you expected. Of course the world throws twists and turns, not just at you, at whole populations, but the picture you have and the picture you have been sold don't match.
That one, the other half of you, hasn't landed yet. The moments to share and build your outward facing life don't stack up in a meaningful way, the messages with large groups of "friends" are not flowing between a phone and a router, nothing comes close to those images that you see, looking for all the world like they should be yours.
Family reassure, it takes time, something worth waiting for is better. But it wasn't like this for them, in their day, this is different. Work, well Mondays are full of how was your weekend and the line just about holds, good thanks, a quiet one (again).
You've tried, but the fixes about resilience, determination and even keeping bad relationships going just don't work.
So it must be me.
While the foreground of your picture isn't right, there's a problem with the background too. It isn't just that it was different in their day, it's that so much is different that it's hard to place the two together.
Being locked in when you could have been out forming relationships, struggling to make ends meet when you should have been finding more, wondering whether there will ever be enough for somewhere to call home.
Right now, in the jumble of this, is there something forming, something pushing forward? Could it be this isn't your picture?
If it isn't, then perhaps there's the beginning of a thread here, a reason for the exhaustion of a picture that never matches, no matter how hard you try. Pull a little, and slowly exhaustion gives some of its energy back, just enough to quiet that relentless beat to keep moving forward. To reach that picture, that isn't yours.
There's a moment that arrives with something that feels familiar, perhaps not felt for a long time, a sense that means this life, right now, can be liberated and become more you.
Can I edit this picture, or should I be working on one from scratch, a portrait that meets me, one I can hold up to the world and say, this is it.
Can all this be mine too?