Burning Beneath

I’ve always been chasing after life. Or maybe it’s been chasing me.

From childhood, it was always about the next step. Finish school—so I did. Then came university—so I went. Then came the job search—so I pursued it. Each milestone felt like a checkpoint I had to reach, a box I had to tick. But through it all, I never stopped to ask: Is this even what I want?

It’s like I was running toward a future that wasn’t mine, following a path that had been paved before I even knew where I wanted to go. I wasn’t living life—I was being led into it.

At 51, I finally stopped. Not by choice, but by force.

My body gave in. The panic attacks became so severe that I ended up in the ICU—more than once. I had no choice but to stop, to breathe, to rethink everything. The illusion of a finish line, a final goal that I had been chasing for decades, shattered before me. Because the truth is—I never even knew what that goal was.

So, who was really chasing who? Was I running toward something real, or was I just running because I didn’t know how to stop?