The Answer Found Me When I Stopped Looking
A reflection on joy, identity, and the self we abandon as adults
Sitting in the middle seat of a bus, my eyes glued to my phone, I listened to my favorite comedy segment through my headphones. What began as a soft smile quickly broke into full-bodied, uncontrollable laughter.
People around me glanced over, confused at first, then started smiling, enjoying the humor even though they couldn’t hear a single word. Laughter rippled through the aisle, easy and contagious.
I must have looked like the happiest person in the world. Only I knew I wasn’t.
I’ve always been the kind of person who insists the glass is full, even when it’s barely filled. People mistake that kind of optimism for strength. They assume hopeful people can’t carry depression. But optimism and depression can coexist. I lived inside that contradiction for years.
The days I stepped out wearing bright lipstick and perfect eyeliner were also the days I was fighting myself the hardest. I was begging the world to tell me I was okay. The high heels, glowing skin, bright smile — none of it was confidence. It was camouflage, an attempt to drown out the voice inside me whispering: shut it all down.
From the outside, I looked grounded, almost poetic, as if I were made of gratitude and light. What no one could see were the insecurities packed so tightly inside me that even I forgot they were there, until the day I finally reached rock bottom.
The dark thoughts began when my daughter turned one. After our wedding, my husband and I built everything from scratch in a foreign land: marriage, home, routines, jobs.
Then we had a baby. Life kept offering lessons, and I kept adapting.
When she started daycare, something inside me shifted. I began feeling anxious for no reason, and my thoughts clouded. Life felt like a sealed deal. A sharp, unmistakable glitch kept nudging me from within: there is more to life than this.
I used to feel unbearably hollow. No amount of good food, people, or anything I love seemed to fill the empty space. It wasn’t sadness or loneliness. I yearned to be seen. I wanted someone to feel what I felt, without having to explain.
I didn’t know whether it was postpartum hormones, the weight of new parenthood, thinning emotional reserves, or the slow erosion of a social circle. So I kept pushing the feeling down, reminding myself that this life contained everything I once prayed for. I was suspended between clinging to old wishes and craving a life I hadn’t yet imagined.
But my life was drifting away from the values I grew up with. My childhood was stitched with family: siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, noise, warmth, community. The thought that my daughter might never know that kind of belonging made me question the life I was quietly building for her. And here’s the truth parenthood doesn’t prepare you for:
At some point, we become the architects of our own lives and our children’s, long before we feel ready.
I didn’t know what needed fixing yet. I only knew that the life I was building had no echo, no place where my feelings could land and come back to me whole.
The first time I admitted that out loud was to my sister. I told her how lifeless I’d been feeling lately.
She looked at me incredulously. “You have everything anyone could ever need.”
“What do I have?” I asked.
She blinked. “Everything.”
She wasn’t wrong. I had calm, stability, and love. Gratitude lived in me, but it couldn’t touch my emotional hunger underneath.
My brother overheard us from across the room and said quietly, “Get out of the house every day. Meet people. Live a normal life.”
It was simple advice, but I didn’t understand its weight until years later, when I began speaking aloud to myself just to hear a voice in the room. That’s when I realized how quiet my world had become.
Most days, the only humans I interacted with were my husband and my child. At work, my conversations were with brilliant but emotionally flat people. My husband and my best friends were all logical and efficient. They loved me deeply, but rarely expressed what they felt about me unless I explicitly asked. Everyone cared, just not in the way I longed to be held.
I craved energy. Emotion. Warmth. The kind that doesn’t wait for permission, the spontaneous spark that lights both mind and heart.
I found that only in my parents’ and siblings’ voices. One phone call from them could lift me for an entire day and echo back to me in the pockets of silence that followed.
I’d tell each of them the same story separately, savoring their different laughs and reactions. My husband once asked, “Why not just put them on a conference call?” As I said, he is very efficient.
He’s an only child. He grew up in a quiet place. I grew up in noise, music, and laughter, in a home where even silence had rhythm.
My siblings could read me without words. Even ordinary conversations turned into jokes that lived for years. We turned pain into humor, chaos into warmth. They’re still my lifeline, even across time zones.
Those calls kept me afloat, but they were still echoes from a past I couldn’t live inside anymore. They reminded me of who I had been, not who I was becoming. I needed a connection that existed in my present.
I was lucky to find a couple of friends through mutual connections, women who quickly became my best girl buddies. Talking to them felt like sipping hot chocolate on a cold winter morning. Meeting them once in a while fed my starving heart. But it was still not enough.
I soon figured it wasn’t just about the people or places; it was a version of myself I could no longer access. Some nights, after everyone went to bed, I’d sit and ponder when I stopped feeling alive in my own skin. When did joy become something I had to schedule?
I often drifted back to the version of me that felt effortlessly alive. In my 20s, I could memorize a Spanish song to impress my siblings, nail dance moves that once seemed impossible, and balance in a headstand without thinking twice. My mind and body were always chasing a new thrill.
I’d reread a single line in a book to feel the dopamine hit again. I learned to say the same sentence in three languages. I turned tense moments into jokes that made a whole room breathe again.
I wasn’t just fun to be around; I was entertaining for myself. I was in love with my own being, with the way I moved, laughed, and existed. I had a mirror, a journal, and a sense of richness no amount of money could buy.
On my birthdays, I wrapped my own gifts to feel the joy of unwrapping something chosen with intention. I smiled into the mirror, sometimes cried into it, and both felt equally beautiful. My spark never needed permission. It beat to the rhythm of the world around me. Life felt like butter back then.
I slipped through it freely, melting and reshaping with every mood, every song, every sunset.
Life has a way of dimming even the brightest glows. You don’t wake up one morning and find your “old” self gone; it seeps out slowly through endless to-do lists and practical decisions that seem harmless in the moment.
The mirror still hangs, but you stop pausing in front of it. The journal gathers dust because there’s always something more urgent to do. The little rituals that once made you feel rich inside start to feel indulgent. Childish, even. And just like that, you stop noticing yourself fully.
Motherhood happened: routines, responsibilities, expectations. And slowly, I became alive only in theory.
I was always too tired to dance with my kids. They’d look at me with so much excitement, and I’d manage a few half-hearted moves before collapsing onto the couch like a pop star after a world tour. I often felt tired from being everywhere and nowhere at the same time.
I’d drag the family out for hikes, imagining the joy it would bring us. But by the time we stepped out of the car, I was already drained, over-explaining to my husband and kids how fun it would be, how these memories would last forever.
In hindsight, it wasn’t the activity I craved. I yearned for someone who wanted the same things, who matched my excitement without me having to convince them. On days my husband readily matched, I loved it. There were days I felt like both the performer and the performance, only no one cared to notice.
I was starving, not for attention, but for the emotional connection.
I celebrated people for their simple gestures in return for my unconditional affection and understanding. I needed to believe I lived in abundance, hoping the glow of my own generosity would be enough to keep me warm. It never did.
You cannot feed yourself with what you give away.
That hunger in my heart started seeping into everything, my moods, my energy, my sense of self. I kept feeling incomplete, no matter how fulfilling my life looked from the outside.
That is when books found me again. It happened on a random weekday, during a library run with the kids. I came home, made myself coffee, and opened the first page, and for the next few hours, I was engrossed. Something in me, long asleep, stirred awake.
I started going back for more. With every new book, I slipped into worlds I never knew existed. My imagination flickered back to life.
I wasn’t escaping my reality anymore; I was remembering that I still had one.
The more I read, the more alive I felt. With books, I didn’t have to perform; I could simply exist. Every page invited new imagery, new possibilities, new ways of being.
Stories introduced me to ordinary people who dared to do extraordinary things: rebels who questioned rules, thinkers who carved out creativity, women who refused to shrink just because they became wives or mothers. Their purpose carried them higher than their excuses.
It was both humbling and electrifying to imagine a life where I, too, could be everything I wanted to be. I realized: I wasn’t broken; I was just underfed, emotionally, creatively, spiritually.
And that’s when the questions I’d long avoided finally rose to the surface, not as whispers, but as truths demanding to be lived:
Are you living your life or the life you’re afraid to lose?
Reading woke up my entire being. Words rearranged something inside me, reminding me of who I once was: curious, expressive, endlessly alive.
As I shared these small rediscoveries with my dad during our daily calls, he said casually, “You’re not using your social skills enough.” It stung at first. But with time, I realized he was right.
I hadn’t lost the desire to connect with people. I had lost the sense of purpose that connection once gave me. I was tired of assembling an identity from the few people around me, relying on them alone to reflect who I was.
We’re all born with a reason tucked inside us, and life keeps sending clues, hoping we’ll notice. For some, the realization arrives early. For others, it takes years. I lived in the in-between, unable to fully embrace my calling, yet unable to ignore it.
I was in a place where my soul whispered the truth but my mind pretended not to hear.
I couldn’t name my purpose yet, but I knew my current life wasn’t leading me toward it. I wasn’t starving for success; I was starving for alignment. I didn’t want to shrink into routines under the excuse of “that’s just life.”
Life isn’t a fixed blueprint. We’re allowed to redesign it by choosing our values and priorities, and by standing firmly in our true, authentic selves.
My creative journey officially began four years ago, when I picked up a book that asked deceptively simple questions:
What are you really good at?
What could you do for life?
What gives you energy?
The pages were filled with prompts that pressed hard on introspection, asking me to pour everything out into a notebook. By the time I reached the end, a pattern had quietly revealed itself. On almost every page, scrawled in the margins, filling empty blanks, appearing instinctively, was the same answer: Writing.
It showed up again and again, as if the art itself had been waiting patiently for me to finally notice it.
I’ve been journaling since fifth grade. What I loved most about writing was the peekaboo of words appearing at my fingertips before they even formed in my mind. Every writing session ended with the same quiet satisfaction, lighting my senses, feeding me with energy. Ink has a way of steadying a breath, shifting a mood, making chaos feel almost beautiful.
Some days, I miss the girl I used to be. But now, when I look in the mirror, I don’t see someone who lost her spark. I see someone who fought her way back to it. And the gift I give myself is the life I deserve to live every day.
Strength isn’t about never dimming, but about daring to reignite.
I feel whole today because I finally realized I am enough exactly as I am. But I became complete only when I found a reason to reach beyond myself and serve others through my writing, even if it’s to make someone pause, nod, or smile. Like you did just now.
If this story resonated with you, pause for a moment and ask yourself: When was the last time you truly listened to the part of you that’s been waiting all along? Share your thoughts in the comments — I’d love to hear your story.
© Tamil, 2025.
PS: This story was originally published in Medium.