“I Don’t Want the Life I Had, but I Don’t Know How to Want Something Else”
“I’ve let go of the life I had. I don’t want to go back to it. I know it wasn’t right for me anymore. But I can’t seem to want anything else either. Nothing excites me. Nothing feels real or possible. I’m not nostalgic, but I’m not inspired either. It’s like I’m standing in a blank space, and I don’t know how to move toward anything at all.”
Dear Jules,
There’s something so quietly aching in what you wrote. Not wanting the past is supposed to mean you’re ready for the future, right? That’s the story we’re told. But what if you’re in the space where neither feels like home? Where you’ve released one identity, one rhythm, one structure—but haven’t yet found a new shape to inhabit?
This space—this blank, uncharted middle—is one of the hardest psychological places to sit. It doesn’t get much attention because it doesn’t have the drama of collapse or the triumph of a fresh start. It’s just the absence of clarity. The absence of pull. You’re not lost in crisis, but you’re not found in vision either. And that absence can feel so disorienting it starts to mimic failure.
But it’s not failure. It’s transition. Real transition. The kind no one sees because it doesn’t make for compelling stories or visible milestones. The truth is, this phase—where desire hasn’t returned yet—is more common than people admit. You’ve done the brave part already: letting go of a life that no longer fits. That’s not easy. That’s not nothing. But what comes next often isn’t lightning bolts of inspiration. It’s the long, slow stretch of waiting for your inner world to catch up.
You wrote that nothing excites you. That’s not apathy. That’s nervous system recovery. When we’ve spent a long time in survival mode—performing a version of ourselves, forcing alignment with something that always felt a bit off—our bodies and minds don’t just spring forward into joy. They rest. They pause. They assess for safety. Wanting something new requires emotional spaciousness, and sometimes that spaciousness has to be cleared out through stillness and numbness before it’s ready to be filled.
And here’s something else that may be true for you, as it has been for so many I’ve spoken to: there’s a subtle grief in not wanting what you once had. Even when you know it wasn’t right. Even when you don’t want it back. Because that version of life, however imperfect, was at least legible. It had structure. It gave you something to push against or perform within. Letting it go isn’t just about shedding old skin. It’s about losing familiarity, losing the known cadence of your days.
What happens next doesn’t need to arrive in the form of a passion or a purpose. It might not even come as clarity. It might come as curiosity. Or softness. Or a moment of quiet where your body doesn’t feel like it’s bracing against the air. That’s enough for now.
We often mistake inspiration as the starting point. But sometimes, it’s the result of giving yourself enough space to feel again.
So what if, instead of forcing yourself to want something else, you just made room for not knowing? What if you didn’t try to build desire before you’ve healed from depletion? There’s no shame in feeling directionless. It doesn’t mean you’re lazy. It doesn’t mean you’re broken. It means you’re in a moment of becoming—and becoming is never tidy.
Let yourself be incomplete. Let yourself be in the quiet before the pull. You don’t need to conjure a vision. You only need to stay with yourself until something, someday, stirs. It will. It always does.
And when it does, it won’t feel like motivation. It will feel like breath. Like aliveness. Like something loosening just enough for you to take one small step forward.
Until then, this space is not empty. It’s sacred. It’s yours.
I’m in it too.
–RJ