I look at the piles of laundry I still have to do, and I sigh. I’m so behind. Why am I always so behind?

Always one for a good metaphor, I know that it’s not just the clothes that are piled up that’s making me feel this way; it’s never just the clothes. It’s also the trailing laundry list of who, what, and where I should be by now, dotted with enthusiastic exclamations and curious question marks. The unwashed heaps of “what could have been” haunting that one chair in my room I put all my dirty clothes on.

When my parents were 33, they had three happy children, three retail stores, a house, two cars, a dog, and managed to cook dinner every night and get us kids bathed and to bed on time.

When I was 33, I got divorced.

If we’re measuring my life by the standard set out beautifully before me, it’s tempting to say I’m far behind. Heck, while my peers are buying houses, having kids, and making meal plans, I’m consolidating credit card debt, naming my roomba, and ordering Chipotle against my better financial judgment.

Lately, though, there’s a new tension whenever I start to feel this pang of being “behind” in life. A subtle nagging that’s saying, behind whom? Who among us has it so right that we become the measuring stick for all other eight billion people on the planet? Maybe, just maybe, I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be, solo and teary-eyed over a double-wrapped sofritas burrito watching 30 Rock while my cats eagerly claw at the queso next to me. What if I’m not behind at all?

“Who among us has it so right that we become the measuring stick for all other eight billion people on the planet?”

I grew up in a very homogenous community — nuclear families with a few kids, a minivan, soccer on the weekends, and house with a dog wagging its tail at the front door. The script was simple: go to school, get a job, get married, buy a house, have kids. That was it! (It sounded way simpler to my adolescent self than I know it is nowadays).

But as I grew up and met more people, learned about other paths that might reveal themselves to me if I was open to them, the map became a bit more muddled. Instead of hugging the coast to sail around a continent, I was in the open ocean with nothing but a compass and a dream. And when my marriage ended, I think I even misplaced the compass for a while, hah!

To this day, though, I still see people following paths I thought I might have taken at some point myself. That’s when this “behindness” creeps into my mind. (If you’re a Lord of the Rings fan, I liken it to Grima whispering in Theoden’s ear, keeping him and his kingdom powerless while the world changes around them in dark and dangerous ways.)

I see the life my parents built on a timeline so different from mine; I see my peers marrying, having children, creating beautiful homes for their families. I feel like there was an adulthood memo that I didn’t get somehow.

But it’s also not that I’ve harbored envy, either. As I’ve grown more into myself and my own confidence, I’m more able to see the incredible things my friends and family are building and hold both deep love and a deep understanding that it’s not for me, at least not right now. And that’s made so much of the difference when I hear that little voice telling me how far behind I am.

“We’re taught that there’s always an ending, and it has to be a happy one. But life doesn’t end with a grand kiss and an ‘I do.’ That’s just one of the plot points in the whole story.”

That voice, I’ve come to understand, isn’t actually the voices of the people I’m happy for. It never is. Instead, it’s the Disney-fication of almost every love story I’ve ever seen play out in movies and shows. Boy and girl fall in love, maybe there’s trouble, they resolve it, and it ends with a kiss. Or a wedding. How many times did I see a film that ended with the main character staying up until 2am watching reruns and forgetting to do the dishes in her sink? We’re taught that there’s always an ending, and it has to be a happy one.

But life doesn’t end with a grand kiss and an “I do.” That’s just one of the plot points in the whole story.

So how can we be behind in a life that’s not over yet?

When I realized how much I was living in “the end,” I realized how much fear I was letting me prevent from actually beginning again. That’s what feeling behind really is; it’s a fear that we’ve somehow royally messed everything up and that it’s all over for us. It feels safer to stay in the certainty of failure than it does to exist in the effort of uncertainty.

And we don’t have to be at rock bottom or completely start over in a dramatic fashion for our lives (and our failures) to count as some sort of divine transformation. So much of the rhetoric I see on my Instagram feed is about how someone lost every single thing in their life and now are starting from ground zero. There’s no threshold for feeling this behindness, just as there is no gatekeeping of grief or difficulties in life. What feels behind to me might look leaps and bounds ahead of another person, and vice versa. Often, the more I talk to my friends about it, the two coexist. “Wait, you thought you were behind? I thought you had it all figured out and that I was the one with no clue!”

These days when I feel behind, I ask myself if I’m operating from fear or from curiosity. When I lead with curiosity, the events unfolding around me don’t feel as cataclysmic as they do when I’m letting fear lead. Somehow, those road blocks become the redirection my heart’s really needing at the time. And, honestly, it’s so much easier to flow through life with that perspective than it is to fight against the current, against those inevitable changes. Be it divorce, or death, or some other devastation — no one is exempt from the tides.

“When I realized how much I was living in ‘the end,’ I realized how much fear I was letting me prevent from actually beginning again…It feels safer to stay in the certainty of failure than it does to exist in the effort of uncertainty.”

What I’m saying here, is that if you’re feeling behind, maybe it’s time to take a minute with your heart and ask her what she’s really feeling. I’d bet, once you get past the ego, you’re going to find a soft, squishy fear that is disguising itself as protection. It’s normal, we’re all human. We inherently want to explain our feelings, to protect ourselves, to keep apace with our peers in a way that says “hey, I’m not a straggler so therefore I deserve love and community!”.

But we’re really measuring ourselves up against an ideal that doesn’t suit our own needs; maybe it’s an ideal that doesn’t even actually exist. Maybe that old map is making us feel lost, because where we’re at and where we’re going was never on that map to begin with.

All we have to do is follow our own curiosity, not the fears that tell us we’re somehow lesser because we haven’t hit certain arbitrary milestones at certain arbitrary ages. Consider this your permission to gently set aside that heart-wrenching feeling of not being where you should be, and instead to pick up that compass and point it where the sun shines the brightest for you. Because perhaps that’s enough.

So tonight, the victory can be just this: I take the laundry out of the basket and fold a couple of towels. Or maybe I pile the clean laundry on the empty side of the bed and let it sit until tomorrow — there are no rules, and there is no required timeline for getting my clothes into their respective drawers. It’s a metaphor, it’s always a metaphor.

I’m not behind, I am simply where I am at. And I get to choose where I go from here.

“Set aside that heart-wrenching feeling of not being where you should be, and instead pick up that compass and point it where the sun shines the brightest for you. Because perhaps that’s enough.”

Emily McGowan is the Editorial Director at The Good Trade. She studied Creative Writing and Business at Indiana University, and has over ten years of experience as a writer and editor in sustainability and lifestyle spaces. Since 2017, she’s been discovering and reviewing the top sustainable home, fashion, beauty, and wellness products so readers can make their most informed decisions. Her editorial work has been recognized by major publications like The New York Times and BBC Worklife. You can usually find her in her colorful Los Angeles apartment journaling, playing with her two cats, or crafting. Say hi on Instagram or follow along with her Substack, Pinky Promise.