If nothing changes, where do I honestly see myself in five or ten years?
I keep circling that question like I am walking around a locked door, trying every handle and still not getting in. I picture the same rooms, the same routines, the same thoughts on loop. Wake up, move through the day on autopilot, distract myself, go to sleep. Repeat.
It feels less like living and more like being stuck in a waiting room that never calls my name.
I wonder if I will still be stagnant, doing the same things every single day. Part of me wants to insist that I will not, that surely something will be different by then. But if I am brutally honest, if I keep thinking and acting the way I do now, if I keep dodging the hard decisions and numbing out whenever things feel heavy, then yeah, maybe I will still be here in the same mental place.
Maybe I will still be drifting, pretending I am fine, trying not to look too closely at the feeling in my chest that keeps whispering: this cannot be all there is.
I keep hoping that something will come along and push me in a new direction. Some event, some crisis, some random twist, something that shoves me out of this stuck place. Maybe I am secretly waiting for life to make the first move because I do not really trust myself to choose change on my own.
Will there be a day when I finally say, “That is it, I am done living like this,” and actually mean it? Or will I just keep letting things happen to me while I shrink back and watch?
I ask myself if I will ever find someone or something worth changing for:
- A person who sees through my bullshit and still stays.
- A passion that grabs me hard enough that I want to show up differently.
- A responsibility that forces me to grow up and be present.
Is that what I am quietly waiting for? Some external reason to give a damn? I imagine waking up next to someone I care about, or waking up excited for something I am building, and actually wanting to try for once instead of just dragging myself through the day.
Then I run into the question that sits beneath all the others. Is it even worth trying? Do I truly care what happens to me anymore?
Some days the honest answer feels like, “I am not sure.” Some days I feel so disconnected from myself that the future seems like a story about a stranger. I know I am supposed to care, that there are people who would tell me my life matters, that I have potential, that things can get better. But inside my own head, it does not always feel that way.
Sometimes when I look ahead, I do not see disaster or success, I just see static. Flat, tasteless, blurry static.
And yeah, the more terrifying questions show up too. Hell, will I even be alive in ten years? Five years? A year? Fuck, a month from now? These thoughts are not just something I say for dramatic effect; they are real questions that drift through my mind at random moments.
- When I am zoning out with a show I am not really watching.
- When I am washing dishes and my brain just slides off into space.
- When I am standing in the shower longer than I need to, just staring at nothing and wondering what the point of any of this is.
I ask myself if I am really built to keep going like this, or if I am just forcing myself forward out of habit.
Will it be worth living for? That might be the hardest question of all. Not just, “Will I still be here,” but, “If I am here, will I even want to be?”
I imagine some older me looking back at this day. Would they be grateful I stayed? Grateful I kept going? Grateful I pushed through this part? Would they see growth that I cannot even imagine right now? Or would they look back with frustration? Thinking, you spent so many years numb, so many years afraid to move, so many years letting life pass while you watched from the sidelines.
There is this constant tug of war inside me. One side is exhausted and just wants everything to stop, or at least slow down long enough for me to breathe. The other side still has these tiny sparks of curiosity. What if something does change? What if I slowly move into a life that actually feels like mine?
I want to believe that future version of me exists somewhere ahead. The one who is more grounded, more open, more alive. The one who can say without hesitation that life is worth the effort.
It feels like standing at the edge of a forest, knowing there is something on the other side, but having no map, no path, and no guarantee that I will not get lost along the way.
And sometimes I am not even sure I want to take the first step into the trees.
Then I come back to this thought: If I really did not care at all, would I be asking these questions with this much intensity?
Would I keep wondering about five or ten years from now? Would I be annoyed at myself for wasting time? Would I be writing any of this out, trying to untangle the knots in my own head? Maybe the fact that I am even asking “Is it worth trying?” means there is some quiet part of me that already suspects the answer might be yes, even if I cannot feel it yet.
Still, I cannot pretend it does not feel heavy. The idea of keeping going “that long” can feel like standing at the bottom of a staircase that disappears into the clouds.
I do not have some inspiring speech or tidy moral to wrap this up. I do not have a clear plan. I just have this mix of fear, anger, numbness, and a weird stubbornness that refuses to fully give up.
If nothing changes, where do I end up? If something does change, will it be because I finally chose to move, or because life cornered me into it? Will I meet someone who makes me feel less alone inside my own head? Will I stumble onto something that makes my existence feel like more than just getting through the day?
Right now I feel stuck between wanting to fast forward through the hard parts and wanting to hit pause and just disappear into stillness for a while. I am tired. I am unsure. I am not convinced the future is a place I want to arrive at.
But I am still here, questioning, imagining, arguing with myself, trying to put this mess into words. And as much as I hate to admit it, there is this small, stubborn part of me that wants to see what happens, wants to see if any of this can turn into something I actually want to stay for, even if I do not trust the outcome yet.
I suppose that is the only real answer I have right now. I do not have a map, and I do not have a guarantee. I just have the refusal to close the book before the story is actually over.
I will stay for the next page, and for now, that has to be enough.