the myth of finding yourself

what if there’s no final version of you?

for most of my life, i believed there would be a moment when the chaos would settle and i would finally “arrive.” that somewhere in the hazy distance, there was a version of myself that was fully formed, untouchable in her certainty, someone i could grow into and stay in forever. i imagined this moment like walking through a final doorway, a place where everything clicked into place and i would know, without hesitation, this is who i am. and so i chased it. i thought every choice, every risk, every heartbreak was just another step toward finding that fixed point, the destination where the restless searching would stop. i was convinced that once i found her, the real me, i’d feel anchored. whole. complete.

but the older i get, the more i realise that door might not exist at all. and if it does, it’s a moving one, always shifting just out of reach. people talk about “finding yourself” like you’re a lost set of keys, something fixed, misplaced, waiting to be retrieved. but what if there’s no permanent self waiting for you? what if you’re not a final thing to be found, but a constantly changing, endlessly rewritten story? this idea is strangely both comforting and terrifying. comforting because it means you can keep evolving without betraying some “true” self. terrifying because it means you might never get to feel like you’ve truly arrived anywhere at all.

there’s a kind of grief in realising you may never feel finished. i can look back at the versions of myself i’ve been, the perfectionist student who thought good grades would solve everything, the social butterfly who believed belonging was the same as being loved, the fiercely independent girl who swore she’d never let anyone in, the quiet dreamer who craved safety so much she almost stopped living. each time, i was certain this is me now. and yet, with time, they all fell away. sometimes it happened quietly, like slipping out of a sweater that no longer fit. other times it felt violent, like being ripped out of my own skin. i keep shedding selves i once fought so hard to grow into, and with each shedding, i feel a little more unmoored.

there are days when this feels like liberation. i like the thought that i’m not locked into any version of myself, that i can change my mind, rewrite my story, start over as many times as i need. but there are also days when this constant shifting feels like an existential freefall. if i’m always changing, who am i, really? which version is the most “real”, the one who’s unflinchingly confident in a crowded room, or the one who lies awake at night replaying every word she said? the one who thrives in chaos, chasing intensity like oxygen, or the one who craves quiet stability so desperately it feels like a hunger? the truth is, they’re all me, and none of them are me entirely.

i think part of the fear comes from how deeply we crave certainty. humans love labels, they give us something to hold on to in the dark. we want to be able to say this is who i am and trust that it will still be true tomorrow. but identity doesn’t work like that. it bends and breaks and rebuilds itself in ways you can’t predict. it’s shaped by the people you meet, the losses you suffer, the places you find yourself in, and sometimes, by the places you’re forced to leave. you can try to hold it still, but it will always slip through your hands, because you’re not a static thing. you’re a process.

once, a friend asked me, half-jokingly, what my last words would be. i froze. not because i don’t have values or convictions, but because i couldn’t imagine choosing one phrase that could possibly sum me up forever. how could i choose something that might not even feel true to me in five years? or five months? the thought left me unsettled, but also aware of something important: maybe the problem isn’t that i don’t know myself. maybe the problem is thinking i ever will in a permanent way.

we’re told that life is about finding ourselves, but maybe that’s the wrong metaphor. maybe there’s nothing to “find,” because there’s no endpoint to arrive at. maybe the point isn’t to uncover some final, fixed identity, but to learn to live in the flux, to let the shifting happen without panicking that you’re losing yourself. because you’re not. you’re just becoming a different version, one you haven’t met yet. and maybe the real challenge isn’t figuring out who you are, but making peace with the fact that you’ll never stop changing.

so maybe the real question isn’t who am i? but can i live with never having a final answer?