The Myth of the Finished Self

They say you should “find yourself,” as if you were lost luggage, as if there’s one fixed version of you waiting to be retrieved. But you are not stone. You are sediment, layered with every love, every leaving, every morning you chose making over mourning. Some parts of you are still wet paint. Others, scaffolding. You’re allowed to revise. To leave a life mid-sentence. To be wrong and begin again. You are not finished and that’s not failure. It’s a kind of freedom to be a rough draft. Be rewritten. Better yet, be the poem that doesn't end. Let changing be the point.