I expect that I can dig up the root of all my problems if I just knew where to look. I imagine I can find everything I’ve ever been looking for just below the surface. That it’s been there all along I just never knew to lift up the floor boards or pick up my feet or turn around.

I wanted to know where it came from. Whether I was born with it, learned it, developed it, grew into it. Whether it caused it – all of it or any of it. I’ve spent so many nights wondering what happened first, and has it caused everything or just one thing – is it all intertwined or not. I’m looking for the relationship – the connection – between each time my body falters. And maybe there’s a relationship between it all. But at the end of the day, does it even matter?

I’ve spent months sifting through my childhood and even when I may have found all the answers it never felt like I did. Felt like I was coming up empty handed but maybe I was holding on to too much.

I’ve never stopped searching. Never stopped trying to put a label on a feeling. To pack up everything I’ve ever felt – everything I’ve ever gone through – into boxes, so compact and organized, and then with one or two little words, write what they’re holding. I thought it’d be easier.

I imagined my life would change if there was a diagnosis. That naming the issue itself would miraculously take it away. But how much would it actually change?

I’ve searched so hard and for so long that the only thing I haven’t tried yet is not searching. That perhaps if I stopped looking for answers for every little thing that’s ever happened, I would be able to stop carrying the weight of it all. That maybe if I stopped for just a moment, I’d learn how to set things down.