Ashes and Asking

It's strange – how growing older feels less like arriving and more like dissolving. No one ever warned me that maturity would feel like this: not triumphant or grounded, but like walking deeper into a forest with no trail behind and no path ahead. I thought age would bring answers. All it's brought is a wider awareness of how little I know.

There's this hollow kind of ache in me lately, a quiet panic that settles in the chest when you realize how alone you really are in your questions. People surround me – talking, moving, smiling – but when it comes to trust, to raw truth, to the cracked open version of me that bleeds questions and fears… no one. No one I can really hand that to. No arms steady enough. No voice reassuring enough. No presence consistent enough.

So I pray.

But not the kind of prayer I was taught as a child. Not the memorized words said before bed. Not the polite requests wrapped in good manners. This is something else. This is the kind of prayer that starts with silence and ends with salt on my face. It's less talking, more breaking. Less asking, more surrender. It's me, on my knees – figuratively, sometimes literally – just whispering, "Help," to a sky that doesn't answer the way people do, but somehow still listens in a good way.

Because who else can I trust with the truth of how lost I feel? Who else sees every corner of my heart and doesn't flinch? Everyone else wants pieces of me – versions. But God – wants the whole, messy, terrified me. And that kind of knowing… it both frightens and frees me.

I don't know what I'm growing into. Maybe it's not wisdom or certainty, but a kind of infinite unknowing. A deeper surrender. Maybe growing up is just growing out of the illusion of control.

Tonight, I have no map, no answers, no plan.

Just a cry in the dark.

And a fragile hope that Someone is listening.

I think what scares me most is not the unknown itself, but the silence inside it. The way it stretches. The way it echoes.

There are days when I go through the motions – work, conversations, the scrolling, the pretending – and no one notices that I'm not really here. I've become so good at masking it, I almost convince myself I'm okay. But then night falls. That's when everything I've shoved aside starts to speak. Or scream.

It's a quiet kind of unraveling. No grand collapse. No visible disaster. Just… small pieces falling out of place. One by one. A forgotten laugh. A swallowed cry. A smile that doesn't reach the eyes. The weight of things I can't name settling into my bones.

And in that heaviness, I start to pray again.

Not because I know how, but because I don't know what else to do. Some words are kind but shallow. No one was trained to hold this kind of chaos. We're all just trying to stay afloat in our own way.

But God. Or whatever is beyond all this noise – He feels different. Or at least, I want Him to be.

I don't pray for miracles. I don't ask for signs anymore. I don't need a sudden fix. I just want to feel something that tells me what to do when I lost in the void. That this ache means something. That this wandering isn't wasted. That there's a purpose buried somewhere beneath, even if I can't see it yet.

Sometimes I whisper things I'd never dare say aloud. Things like:

"I don't know who I'm becoming."

"I feel like I'm disappearing."

"I don't want to feel this lost anymore."

It's not eloquent. It's not poetic. It's just real.

I wonder how many people feel like this but never say it out loud. How many walk through life wearing well-stitched masks, while inside they're crying out to a God they're not even sure is listening.

Maybe faith isn't certainty. Maybe it's reaching anyway.

Maybe prayer isn't words. Maybe it's the act of showing up in the silence.

Maybe growing old isn't about becoming wiser, but about becoming more honest. More broken, but also more open. Like clay being reshaped again and again, not toward perfection, but toward something softer. Something more human.

I don't have any conclusions today. I'm not writing this to solve anything.

I'm just here.

Breathing. Asking. Hoping.

And maybe – for now – that's enough.