Linkin Park’s music filled the headphones during my youth. Being played on repeat to a crowd of one, their music was like a perfect whirlwind touching down into my life when the world felt chaotic, and a storm was exactly what I needed. The music themes of hurt, pain, and loneliness resonated with the depth of my desperate struggle to feel wanted in all the years I felt alone.

As I grew older, I found spaces that I felt were supportive and people who were willing to support me. The need to listen to Linkin Park went away, and that feeling of finding something new to sustain me grew. Years past as I made progress towards feeling whole, maybe by pushing aside these much more difficult feelings. I sometimes wondered if I was actually healing or just pushing away these sorrows and hurts to a more manageable place. What I didn’t expect with all my progress is that graduate school would uproot my comfort, uproot my hurt, and make me come face to face with my trauma when I still felt unready and unwilling. Though we do not get to choose the moments of our lives that need to deal with our problems, there were certainly better and worse moments. Even through the miracle that has been brought about by the most recent freedoms, I still feel drawn back into that darkness, drowned in difficulty, feeling alone and out of place.

Sometimes, my life feels like I’m still that kid, listening to that cathartic rock/hip-hop music, wondering when my time will come. When the doors open, when I feel welcomed into a place I was meant to be. When my talents, time, and presence are all seen as an asset rather than just existing in that space. I feel warmed by conversations and don’t feel paranoid about whether or not my comments are received positively. Maybe that is too much to ask from the world, but it’s so fundamental that it feels wrong to believe it should not exist.

This is my great fear for the next stage of my life. That I continue to feel this unease as I move into these spaces where I don’t belong and miss the opportunity to find a better place for me. That the uneasiness is not a feature of needing to learn or adapt but a much more fundamental impediment of my character. That I have gone all this way just to be unfit for the spaces I have striven for. After all these years, I’m still that kid wondering when my time will come, and I will find these places and people I am meant to be with. When I finally self-actualize and feel like I could contribute meaningfully. Places where I’m not constantly second-guessing myself because of this fear of ineptitude. Is this just how academics are meant to feel? If so, why would I want to put myself through this. If this is a sign I don’t belong, then why am I so afraid of doing something new.

Though I have moved to a better place and found friends I can rely on, I sometimes feel still like that lonely boy listening to Linkin Park, but maybe that will continue to be my motivation to find someplace better. Someplace I belong.