I don't know why I am the way I am

I start and abandon piece after piece about feeling lost. I can't figure out how to put these feelings into words, or even decide if there's a point in doing so, and I end up with even less understanding of myself at this time in my life. Have I lost some part of me that I want back? Or does middle age inevitably lead to this feeling of loss regardless of how life plays out? Is there a "me" that remains inside waiting to be unlocked, discovered, awakened? Am I in there, amongst the clutter? Or is that searching futile because the me I'm remembering lives only in the past? 

Jesus, I teeter on boring myself, feeling like a poseur listening to young people's music and looking inward with falsely worn depth. 

I do know that I am in a clutter crisis, internally and externally. I look around me and can't figure out if my life is kitsch cool or borderline hoarding. Okay, maybe too harsh with the hoarding, but I can't help but see my internal chaos mirrored in all the stuff around me. How did we get here? Do I need to Marie Kondo all this shit, I ask myself, but even the little items all have stories that are simply excerpts from my life. 

Time. All I ever feel that I need is time. Well, money would never be passed up, either, but time seems the most elusive. Ironically, when we were all granted nothing but time right around this point three years ago, I couldn't seem to find the motivation to actually do much. For all that the pandemic took, it definitely gave time, and that was a gift I couldn't appropriately accept, apparently. 

As I face whatever this crisis of lostness is, as usual, I'm tempted to turn to my two favorite coping mechanisms-- lists and organizing. If I could just get everything down on paper that I need to fix, clean, update, sort, trash, redo, and on and on, then I could find the starting point and move forward. As if there is some linear path with discernible steps to feeling whole again. 

Maybe I'm going about this all wrong. Does aging mean we leave certain parts of ourselves in the past and adapt and change into new pieces that have to then be integrated into the whole? Are we puzzles with constantly, but slowly, changing images, making room for shape-shifting pieces? Maybe that image is never actually complete? Nothing turning out exactly as we pictured it? Is that the fun in it all? 

What am I missing? (And I mean this in so, so many ways.) What parts of me am I missing in this moment, right now? And what am I missing that my contemporaries seem to have? Or are you all just better at hiding your own feelings of feeling lost? 

All I have are questions. 

Title inspiration: "Not Strong Enough" by boygenius