I’ve been sitting with a question that sounds simple:
What do I want?
When I first answer it, I notice that I reach for outcomes.
I want love. Connection. Financial independence. Good health. I want the people I love to be safe, happy, healthy, and growing. I want things to work out. I want the future to remain open.
I do want those things. I don’t need to pretend otherwise.
But after sitting with the question, I noticed another one underneath it:
How do I want to be, regardless of what happens?
That question feels closer to something I can actually choose.
Recently, in a 12-step fellowship, I found myself pushing against the words, “Hi, my name is Adrian. I am an addict.” I understand why that language matters to many people. I also felt a difference, for myself, between naming something I struggle with and making it my identity.
What felt true was:
My name is Adrian. I am a perfectly imperfect human being, and I am in recovery for addiction.
I have made choices I regret. Some of them hurt me and people I love. I want to be able to look directly at my choices. Own what is mine. Make amends where I can. Learn. Change. Forgive myself.
I don’t want accountability to require me to believe I am a bad person.
Maybe that is part of what grounded self-worth means to me. My worth does not rise when I succeed or disappear when I fail. If I can stop putting my worth on trial, I may actually have more room to tell myself the truth.
I want that.
I want to love myself without making that love depend on my performance, my mistakes, or the way things turn out. I want to see myself clearly, including the parts I regret, without reducing myself to them.
I am not my addiction.
I am not my mistakes.
And I am not my successes either.
I want to trust myself. For me, that feels different from worth. Worth is not something I want to keep earning. Trust is something I can build through what I choose and what I do.
I want my beliefs, words, choices, and actions to move in the same direction. I want to become whole. Not a different person. More fully myself.
Then there are the people I love.
I want to be present as my best self, especially when things are uncomfortable. I want the people I love to be happy, healthy, growing, and surrounded by joy, kindness, and love.
And I am beginning to see the harder part of that wish: loving someone does not give me authorship over their life.
Can I love without holding on so tightly that love becomes control?
I want to love without possession.
There are parts of my life that are intertwined with the lives of people I love. Their stories are theirs to tell. I can speak honestly about what is mine without telling what belongs to them.
I cannot choose another person’s path. I can choose how I walk mine.
I want to keep doing my work because it is my work. Therapy. Men’s group. 12 step. My health. Financial independence. Learning how to be with myself when there is nothing to distract me and no outcome to chase.
That brings me back to another belief I’ve carried for a long time: I always get what I want. Maybe not on my timing. Often better than I imagined.
I still love something about that belief. There is faith in it for me.
But now another question has appeared:
What if I don’t get what I want?
Not later. Not in another form. Not because something better was waiting.
What if I deeply want something and it simply does not happen?
Can I want something with my whole heart, lose it, grieve it, and still be okay?
Can I trust life without requiring life to give me the ending I imagined?
I think I am reaching for a different kind of faith:
I don’t know whether I will get what I want. I trust myself to meet what comes.
I want to be okay by myself without confusing being by myself with being alone. I want to feel connected to the divinity within me, to other people, to life, and to Source. I know I will not always feel that connection. I want to remain open to it anyway.
Maybe this is what I’m discovering:
Some of the deepest things I want are not things life has to give me.
They are ways I want to meet life.
I want to be loving. Truthful. Accountable. Trustworthy. Present. Courageous. Whole.
I want to love without controlling.
I want to trust myself enough to choose consciously, take responsibility for my choices, accept what I cannot control, and meet whatever comes as myself.
My worth does not depend on how the story turns out.
I don’t get to author the whole story.
I get to author my part.
And then keep walking.