I feel very untethered. Even before my dad died almost three years ago, I had moved a bit. But I still felt connected, like a kite on a string. Since he’s been gone, I’m floating free. Too free.

From the time I was a teenager, my mom and I have not had what you’d call a strong relationship. We just don’t like each other very much. It’s not that we have nothing in common; quite the opposite. Almost everything I don’t like about myself I learned from her. All those personality traits I hate about myself, the ones I work so hard to overcome, are the same faults I find in her. It’s hard to be around someone who reminds you of the person you used to be. And it makes it all the more difficult to remember you are not that person anymore.

Most people (Many people? Some people?) have a constant. A person, activity, or belief that is always there in some manner or other.

I lack a lifelong friend or family member to whom I am close, reminding me who I am…and how far I’ve come. I don’t have a talent that defines me. There isn’t something I was just born to be, nor an overriding purpose to what I do.

Where is the Desmond Hume to my Daniel Faraday? I need a constant.