A still pool of water. It’s so cloudy from the muck and the mire of certain obligations and decisions, of certain emotions and contradictions, that I can›t even see myself in the reflection, and only the depth of the darkness is discernible.

Looking back, the word I would use to describe these past four years would be dissatisfying.

“Unhappy” would be an overstatement, as from the outside, there was no palpable problem plaguing my life – no bullying, no divorce, no failing grades.

Yet “happy” would be a peppy label slapped on an air of impenetrable dissatisfaction, one I couldn’t dissipate even with the greatest of achievements or distractions.

I felt as if I didn’t have any real friends I could go to, or have more than a superficial conversation with. I felt as if I couldn’t devote as much time to my writing as I wanted, instead overloading myself with schoolwork.

As sophomore year crept into junior year, and time went on, I could feel the bucket of my collective optimism and energy and buoyancy lurching and leaking from the cracks at the bottom.

I found myself not caring about anything, not wanting anything, hardened by an environment in which I couldn’t pursue what I cared about and was told that what I wanted didn’t matter.

But why the dissatisfaction when I was the one who had created it all?

It confounds me how we can get to a point of such disillusionment, how we can grow detached from our environments and fail to identify with our conditions, when modern times seem to present nothing to us but choice in how we want to spend our lives.

One of the hardest things to do is to take accountability for your own shortcomings. I’m doing it now, and I’m saying it aloud, and I’ll write it here, although it’s still a difficult concept for me to admit: I am to blame for my own dissatisfaction.

It was me who had never sought out another friend group, and it was me who had signed up for the difficult course loads that consumed my time late into the night.

And yet I can’t help but feel like “choice” itself has become an illusion, a mirage, a deception created by our own minds to trick ourselves into thinking we hold the dice when we don’t.

I was pushed toward those choices by the social climate and the academic climate, and so I chose but I didn’t choose, and was not happy but not unhappy.

It’s almost like a puzzle, choosing which pieces go where, yet the outcome is entirely predetermined and the pieces only fit in certain places.

Outside forces—whether they be societal, familial, religious, or so on—give us the pieces and expect us to put them together, and the frustration I feel and I think a lot of other people feel occurs when we don’t want to.

Who is to say we even wanted to play?

As I approach the next chapter in my life, I am starting to think about what it would really take—when everything else goes away—to be satisfied.

What would it take for you to be able to take a step back and look at yourself and see nothing but a reflection—pure and gleaming—of your most inner self?