Tell us about a time when you felt out of place.

I’ve spent the last three years somewhere between presence and absence. Not gone, not entirely—but not fully here either. There’s a hollow in me now, carved slowly, almost imperceptibly, like water wearing away stone. It’s the feeling of being out of place, of watching life happen around me while I float on the edges, untethered.

When it first started, I didn’t notice. The days blurred together, ordinary and safe, but every laugh I joined felt slightly forced, every conversation slightly out of sync. I would leave rooms with my chest tight, asking myself why everything I once loved—the places, the people, the routines—felt so unfamiliar. Over time, I realized that it wasn’t the world that had changed—it was me. Or maybe it was that I had left pieces of me behind somewhere along the way.

Pieces I didn’t know I had. The part of me that used to get lost in music, in books, in conversations that stretched into the night. The part of me that felt fiercely alive when I was creating, exploring, connecting. Those pieces were scattered, perhaps even sacrificed, in the name of survival, adaptation, or just plain endurance. And in their absence, I’ve felt a quiet, persistent grief—like mourning someone I can’t touch anymore.

The hardest part isn’t the loneliness. It’s the subtle alienation from yourself. You wake up and look in the mirror, and there’s recognition, but also distance. A stranger lives in your skin, wearing your face. I have learned how painful it is to exist in the gap between who you were and who you are becoming—sometimes it feels like I am suspended, neither here nor there, forever waiting for a return I’m not even sure I want anymore.

And yet, there’s a strange clarity in this exile. When you are stripped from the familiar, stripped from the fragments that once felt essential, you start to notice what really matters. You start to ask uncomfortable questions: Which parts of me were real, and which parts were borrowed to fit in? Which pieces of my soul did I abandon to survive, and which have I been holding onto, afraid to claim?

Some days, the weight of this absence feels unbearable. I can trace the edges of it in quiet moments—in the pause before sleep, in the empty seats at gatherings, in the long silences that stretch between messages I never send. It’s raw, unfiltered, relentless. And yet, I’ve begun to see that this pain is not a void—it’s a signal. It’s a reminder that the soul remembers what the mind forgets. It remembers the pieces we neglect, the sparks we dim, the desires we silence.

So I gather them slowly. Not all at once. Not perfectly. A fragment here, a memory there, a passion reawakened in a fleeting moment. I write, I reflect, I feel, I fail. And with each small reclamation, I feel more whole, more myself, more capable of existing in a world that has so often felt alien.

Three years away from pieces of my soul have taught me that being out of place is not a curse—it is a calling. It is an invitation to search, to grieve, to reclaim, and to rebuild. It is uncomfortable, devastating, and brutally honest—but also necessary.

I don’t know when the journey ends. Maybe it doesn’t. Maybe the point isn’t to return to what I was, but to embrace what I am becoming: a self forged in absence, tempered by longing, and slowly, beautifully, gathering the pieces I once lost.

-🦩