For most of my adult life, I carried a quiet unease that would drift in and out of my mind — never loud, never urgent, just a whisper that something wasn’t quite right. I couldn’t name it then, but looking back, I can see what it was trying to tell me: I wasn’t really living the life I wanted.
It wasn’t one single moment that brought that truth to light — it was more like a persistent thought that kept coming back. I’d feel it when life slowed down and I had time to clearly think — driving home from work, doing yard work, or when I would stay up late to have the house to myself. For some reason, my thoughts would settle around the fact that I was feeling less alive.
It slowly crept in through my health, my energy, and a steady loss of ambition I didn’t want to admit. My body was also telling me that truth long before my mind did. I always wanted an adventurous life where I would do so many amazing things. Yet, in my smaller, local life, my mountain bike sat untouched. My back hurt. Even playing with my kids left me tired and sore after only a little while. Every ache and every short breath reminded me that the life I used to enjoy was fading — and the life I wanted felt even farther out of reach.
On the outside, I’m sure I looked fine to everyone else. But inside, something important was weakening. I could feel it — even if I didn’t want to face it yet.
That’s when I started noticing how the same thing was happening emotionally.
Numbing of my thoughts and emotions
During all those years, I was still kind. Still patient. Still caring for others. Still trying to be a good husband, father, son, and brother. But somewhere along the way, I convinced myself that my own feelings didn’t matter as much.
If something hurt, bothered me, or caused me stress, I’d reason it away.
“It’s fine. It’s not a big deal. I can easily go with the flow. There’s no point in saying anything.”
Then I’d shove the feeling aside and move on.
I told myself that was maturity; that it was better to stay calm, avoid unnecessary conflict, and not let small things bother me. I would tell myself that whatever someone did that upset me, it wasn’t really their fault. They didn’t know. And there was no reason to make a fuss because, again… it wasn’t a big deal.
It all boiled down to two things I told myself were good things in how I dealt with these situations:
- Avoid unnecessary conflict — if it was not really a big deal, do not make it one.
- Avoid unnecessary stress — I had believed that stress was a primary driver of my father’s health issues throughout his life. Conflict, of course, being a big source. So, avoid #1 and you can more easily avoid #2. Anything else that caused stress, I would just throw up a nice batch of stoicism against.
But all that unspoken frustration, disappointment, and imbalance had to go somewhere. And over time, it just… piled up.
And as I struggled with my own feelings, I realized this wasn’t just about emotions — it was also about the part of me that had drifted away from my spiritual roots, leaving another quiet emptiness behind.
Leaving my spiritual identity behind
It had been decades since I left the church I grew up in. I had grown up in what I now see as a very routine kind of religion. Sunday and Wednesday services. Set activities during each. Often, the same topics would be retaught throughout the years. Rinse and repeat.
Later, after leaving the church of my childhood, I helped launch another church that taught scripture differently. It helped me see Christianity in a new light, focused on love, mercy, grace, and forgiveness. The relationships developed felt more like familial bonds than friends or acquaintances. But after several years, things changed in all of our lives, and that church disbanded.
Shortly after that time, the passion and drive I once had — to discover the certainty of my own beliefs — had faded. At times, even resentment crept in when I would think about how my mind and beliefs were shaped through childhood teachings that put an emphasis on one right and all others wrong, with the fear for my soul being on the line. It was a tightrope that went only one direction and even the slightest misstep meant death. I didn’t realize until many therapy sessions later in my life that this was the entry point of most of the fear in my early life.
I told myself I was still a good man, still doing good things. I didn’t need the religious routines. Those teachings of my youth were no longer what I fully believed. But deep down, I knew something was missing. Something beyond knowledge, beyond belief — something I could feel. Something that I could call my truth.
All of it — the physical strain, the buried emotions, and the spiritual drift — was gradually adding up, and I could no longer ignore the truth staring back at me.
The unavoidable truth
I wasn’t living — I was surviving. And, I wasn’t even surviving what was my life, I was subconsciously living according to what others – including our culture and society – were telling me it should be.
The college degree. The marriage. The 2 kids and a house. The job that becomes a career. The savings account and 401K. The fact that, for most of us, we cannot finally live and fully enjoy life until retirement, if we even make it to that point.
And once you see that clearly, you can’t unsee it.
That realization — that I had been surviving instead of living — was the moment I knew things had to change.
But it was not the moment that I fully decided to change. That took a series of events that included pain, loss, and health scares.
In my next post, I’ll share the events that finally pushed me to take action and begin truly reviving my life.
