my soul search

I’ve done a lot of soul searching in the last few years.

When I say “a lot”, I really mean a lot. It’s taken a great deal for me to find out what I’m really made for and it’s not what it seems. I thought my calling was to be a writer for my passions always pulled me closer to the edge than anything else but it wasn’t my passion that brought out the best in me; it was the one thing that I never liked doing.

Leading is apparently my forté but I never thought that it would’ve been my calling. I don’t like it as much as I thought I would because the responsibilities are far too much for my liking but I’ve completed more than what people my age — at 21 would have done. I like to think that I’m a successful woman but I am far from that and I still have much to learn from the business world.

“Don’t let it go to waste. You have a talent,” is what my mother always tells me. I tell her that I don’t like this life and she tries to convince to use this gift that I have.

I never liked business. That is a given. It was never my thing but my talents have brought me further than what most people are capable of and it is a gift that I would truly be willing to let go to waste just so I can spend it on my passions for writing.

Soul searching is an interesting term. I did a lot of that in the last few years. I started when I was 17 just starting fresh in a new school and I had isolated myself from a group of friends whom I felt were far too materialistic and unreal for me. I never felt like I could truly fit in so I isolated myself and from there, my journey to soul searching began.

I discovered my passion for reading at a very early age but my passion for writing was a whole new level — a skill that I never knew I had and I fought to improve it over the years. I first realised I had a knack for writing when I wrote a post on this very blog in 2016, when I was 18. The post is long unpublished now but it was one of my best. My father had read it and he told me that I wrote well and I had this talent that shouldn’t go to waste.

I began writing my first book then. My first, real book and it was 32 chapters long with over 100,000 words. It took me almost two years to finish it and it is still one of my proudest works. I never got it published even though I had two offers to independently publish it and I never went through with it because I wanted a traditional publisher. That was how much I wanted it to be done right.

It’s been almost three years since I’ve finished that book and even to this day, it still lays somewhere on the internet, unheard and unpublished. I wait for the right time when I finally get to see it on the shelves and I pray for an opportunity such as that everyday.

I have immense knowledge and skill in many categories and some may think that I’m sucking my own tit but I am talented in more ways than one. Even to my small, 5’0 body, I can accomplish more things than people older than me could but the thing is, I don’t want to hold that much power and responsibility.

Being good at everything means nothing but expectations and failures. Being good at everything means that the whole world looks to you for an answer even when you don’t have one. You’re bestowed this power and you don’t want it.

I can’t describe the number of times I’ve thought about death. It’s the one few times that I spend my days alone and I just think about what if I just disappeared. My mind reels at how everything would fall apart because everything depends on me as a person and all I am is a 21 year old girl who wants to live her best life and be a person on my own. But with these responsibilities and people looking to me for answers, I feel a sort of suffocation that I shouldn’t have to feel at my age.

But I do.

My passion is writing. It is a sole activity that one completes on their own but my talent for leadership and my skills are needed and sometimes, having too much feels like too much. Sometimes I think about death not only to imagine life without me but also to end this feeling of suffocation that I relieve everyday of my life.

I don’t brag. People around me know that but this is the truth about myself. I searched my soul deep enough to discover the truth about my own life and it is that I’m a leader with these skills that I don’t want and these expectations on me when I just want to live and survive on my own.

I think about how I never got a proper, normal dating life until my father died and it was one of my worst experiences of my life. I was 18 when I had my first boyfriend and I wish I’d never met him because of the pain and trauma he caused me. I had to grow up after that.

My gifts may be beyond what an average person would have but they do still stop somewhere because I could never unlearn the abusive behaviour that my first boyfriend showed me and it has impacted my life greatly to a point that it affected the rest of my relationships. I’m still learning to heal but two years is far too long for me to try and understand what love truly is when it’s not pain and hurt.

The only time my soul connected with someone was once last year with someone I barely knew and even then, I wanted to marry him. But all good things come to an end and I spent the last nine months trying to connect with someone else to no avail, and only with my last unsuccessful attempt to date someone did I realise my true problem.

My insecurities and failure to put my trust in someone had affected my ability to love someone. I wanted to deny that I was damaged but I was far more damaged than my partner was and he had gone through so much more than I did. But while he learned to heal over the years, I was learning to project myself onto him.

It was toxic behaviour and it hurt when I learned that I was a toxic being in his life but nine months later and I’m still learning. Slowly but surely, I try to understand. Slowly but surely, I find my true calling.

I am a natural born leader and I know what I bring to the table. Boys may be afraid of that but I know that if people like him existed then there would be someone else who would be willing to hold my hand while I lead. My worth was taken away from me several times throughout my life by people who didn’t know my potential but I see what I bring to the table and I see what I can achieve.

My love life has been a failure but like I said before — my talents stop somewhere and love is where it stops.

But I know somewhere in my soul searching that I’ll find the answers. I’ve found my calling and who’s to say that I won’t find the answers to love.

One day.