I want to be better

And I don’t know how

Lately, I’ve been sitting in this frustrating space between wanting to be better and knowing how to get there. My body feels sluggish, my brain foggy, my relationships distant, my motivation nonexistent. I wake up thinking, Okay, today I’ll try harder, but by midday, I’m back to staring at the ceiling, overwhelmed by the weight of everything I should be doing.

I feel frozen. Not just stuck but frozen. Like standing in an empty field with no home to return to, no map, no clear direction forward. Everyone talks about getting better, but what is better, exactly? A place? A feeling? A version of me I haven’t met yet?

And I know I’m not alone in this. Maybe you feel it too — the weight of knowing you should be further along, more together, more something. Maybe you remember a version of yourself that felt braver, brighter, more certain. Maybe you’ve been chasing them, trying to get back to someone you used to be, wondering where exactly they disappeared.

All I know for sure is that I can’t go back. And yet… for so many reasons, I want to.

Because there was a girl in me once. At 5, at 10, at 15. She was brimming with confidence, with dreams, with potential. She had this fire, this unshakable belief in herself. She created, she wrote, she laughed loudly, she took up space. She wasn’t universally liked, but it didn’t bother her… until it did.

And that’s the part I can’t quite place. When did it shift? When did the fog roll in? When did confidence turn into a carefully crafted performance? I used to think I knew her, but the more I reach for her, the more she feels like a dream I made up. A mirage of someone I wish I had been.

And maybe you have a version of that too. A version of yourself that felt more alive, more certain, more real than the person you feel like now. Maybe you don’t know when it changed, either. Maybe you’re left questioning if you were ever really that person at all.

Because now? Now all I see is what’s missing. The cracks that weren’t visible before. The people-pleaser. The second-guesser. The one who shrinks herself down, who apologizes for taking up space, who wonders if she was ever truly as bold as she remembers.

Did I fake it back then? Or am I faking it now?

And if I lost her, does that mean I can find her again? Or is she gone forever, buried under years of exhaustion, disappointment, and quiet grief for something I can’t name?

And the worst part? I know better. I know I should be gentler with myself. I know beating myself up won’t create motivation. I know healing isn’t linear. I know all of this, but knowledge doesn’t seem to translate into action. And that’s where the guilt comes in.

If I really wanted to change, wouldn’t I have done it by now?
Other people figure this out. Why can’t I?
Am I just making excuses?

That spiral is cruel. The more I tell myself I should be better, the worse I feel for not already being there.

And maybe you’ve felt that too. The pressure to just do the thing, to force yourself into motion when everything inside you feels heavy and uncertain. The frustration of knowing you need to move forward but feeling incapable of doing it.

I can’t even speak up loudly. Sometimes, I don’t hear myself at all (my voice, my thoughts, and the core of who I am supposed to be). And when I try, when I force the words out, they come out wrong. Too quiet. Too uncertain. Too fractured to hold any weight. It shows when I see the look on their face as I’m trying to express a single train of thought.

And that… that hurts more than I know how to explain.

Because once, there was a girl in me who was so sure of herself. Maybe not in the way people think of confidence (loud, perfect, unshakable, which she was), but whole. She never questioned if she was good enough. She spoke without rehearsing the words in her head first. She existed without the crushing weight of comparison, expectation, and hesitation. She wasn’t universally liked but that didn’t stop her from being unapologetically real.

But somewhere between then and now, she blurred. And maybe you’ve felt that blurring too? Losing the edges of who you once were, unsure of what’s left. Maybe you remember what it felt like to be someone who didn’t hesitate, who didn’t overthink, who didn’t feel so lost inside themselves.

I don’t know how to be who she was supposed to be.

Because I haven’t fully accepted all the transitions she’s been through. I can see how every twist, every loss, every lesson brought me here. But here is exhausting. Here feels like another transition into something I can’t yet name. And here is asking me to keep moving forward when I don’t know if I have it in me.

Maybe it’s not about going back.

Maybe we haven’t lost ourselves or the could’ve beens. Maybe those parts are still here, waiting to believe we still deserve to be whole.

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Keep holding on,
Shruti.