Moon River

I sat by my apartment window, watching the city pulse with life. Neon lights flickered, traffic hummed below, and yet, despite the movement all around me, I felt like I was standing still. For years, I had been chasing something—freedom, adventure, meaning—but now, for the first time, I wasn’t sure what I was running toward.

The quarter-life crisis had arrived, uninvited but inevitable. I had built a life that looked exactly how I wanted it to: independent, untethered, full of possibilities. But now that I had it, a quiet, unsettling thought crept in, was this really it? Was I happy, or just busy?

And then, there was the heartbreak. Not the dramatic kind, not the kind that leaves you shattered in an instant, but the slow, aching realization that some things aren’t meant to last. That sometimes, no matter how much you wish otherwise, connections fade, and people become memories. I had been here before, convincing myself I was fine, burying myself in new cities, new experiences, new distractions. But this time, there was nowhere to run.

I had to sit with it.

The hardest part wasn’t moving on, it was figuring out who I was without the distractions, without the constant motion. I had always defined myself by what I did, where I went, what I pursued next. But when the excitement dulled, when the noise faded, who was I?

So I searched.

I picked up my camera, not just to document the world, but to see it differently, to find beauty in stillness. I started writing again, not just about places, but about myself, about the things I had been too afraid to say out loud. I let myself be alone, really alone, and learned that solitude wasn’t emptiness. It was space.

And somewhere in that space, I began to thrive.

The answers didn’t come all at once. Some days, they didn’t come at all. But slowly, I realized I wasn’t lost. I was just in between. And for the first time, I wasn’t afraid of that.