When the spark goes quiet
On the slow dimming, and still listening.
I used to know what it felt like to want things.
Not the big things — not the career goals or the five-year plans. I mean the small, quiet wants. The urge to pick up a camera because the light looked interesting. The pull toward a blank canvas. The feeling of reaching for something not because it was useful, but because it made me feel like me.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped reaching.
I'm not sure when it happened exactly. It wasn't a single moment — more like a slow dimming. The kind you don't notice until you're sitting in a room and realizing all the lights are off.
Lately I've been trying to find my way back. I picked up my camera again. But the photos didn't feel the same. Something in the framing felt off, or maybe it was the person behind the lens who felt off. I thought about painting. About making things with my hands. But even that felt like a risk I couldn't afford — what if I started and couldn't finish? What if I tried and it felt like nothing?
I watched a video recently about how we shrink as we grow up. How the older we get, the smaller our dreams become — until even the smallest act of choosing ourselves feels like something we need to earn. Like rest is a reward, not a right. Like joy needs to be justified.
I understood every word.
"You've just gotten so used to being okay for everyone else that you've forgotten how to be honest about not being okay for yourself."
There's a particular kind of loneliness that comes with carrying things in silence. You tell yourself you're protecting the people you love from the weight of your feelings. But the truth is, you've just gotten so used to being okay for everyone else that you've forgotten how to be honest about not being okay for yourself.
I don't have a resolution to offer here. No silver lining I've already found. I'm in the middle of it — the fog, the emptiness, the strange in-between of knowing something needs to change but not yet knowing what.
But I'm still writing. And maybe that means something.
Maybe the spark isn't gone. Maybe it's just gone quiet, waiting for me to stop being so loud with my worry and my to-do lists and my attempts to be fine.
Maybe I just need to sit in the silence long enough to hear it again.
I'm still listening.