In middle school, I fell in love with a quote I stumbled upon on the never ending pages of tumblr: "not all those who wander are lost."

And, at the age of 20, I quickly realized the (frightening) tangibility of the truth that some of us are, in fact, lost — honestly, I think I've had about a good amount of existential crises this year alone.

I'm halfway through my college career still as lost and confused as the day that I started. There are days — constant, reoccurring days — in which I feel that my life is at a stand still and there wasn't a bone in my body that even had an inkling of which direction to go. I was lost.

I am lost.

I think it's the prospect of seeing everyone else around me with their plans for the future already laid out like a hand-made blueprint. They knew what they wanted to do with their lives and what career they wanted to pursue, where they wanted to end up. And here I was, trying to sketch out rough draft after rough draft and never getting past a few lines on the page.

My freshman year of college alone, I changed my major three times because I just didn't really know what I wanted to do. I still don't, as a matter of fact.

There was always too much pressure and too many expectations but never enough reassurance or support. I had this idea from the very beginning of college that I should've already figured out who I was, that I should already have had my life together.

I thought I would've already been someone by now.

Came with that was also the prominent fear that the possibility of failing was still there, that I could fall short of the woman I wanted to become (whoever that was).

But, I think I need to learn to be more patient with myself, to learn that each step — no matter how small — is still a step forward to somewhere. I didn't quite yet need a destination and maybe it wasn't even about the destination. That was the beauty of the future, the fact that everything up to this point is all in the unknown.

It's the prospect of drafting a life all on my own — with no guidelines, no plan, no preconceived blueprints.

And maybe, just maybe those who wander wanted to be lost. Or even perhaps, they weren't lost, not exactly anyway. Maybe they were just doing a little searching.