More

When does it become enough? 

What I have, where I’m at. 

When is it no longer about more?

More space in my apartment. 

More money to afford that space.

More time to do the things that make me happy.

More time to figure out what those things are. 

Rat races and new faces, more contacts in my phone to call and text and meet for brunch on the weekends. I try on more outfits because I’m less sure of what to wear these days. 

More things are in and more things are out and I buy more clothes and shoes to piece together a style that has stopped feeling like my own. 

I have more friends than ever before but I feel so distant from everyone.

There’s more layers to my relationships and not all of them overlap.

Daily updates have turned into monthly catch ups and I’m left with pieces scattered around the globe, disconnected and confined to their places and times.

Might as well be memories.

So, I plan more trips to visit each person, each part of my life, and I can’t help but ache for my freshman year college dorm or the childhood bedroom I shared with my sister.

Why did we put so much distance between ourselves?

I’m getting older so I set more goals and work more to meet them.

I put more stress on myself when they aren’t coming as easily as they did when I was nineteen.

Or nine. 

How will I feel when I’m twenty-nine? 

But that’s in five more years. 

I’m more stressed from more responsibility so I try to relax more. Take back the 5-9s outside of my 9-5. But I don’t make use of every minute and I put more pressure on myself to find that fulfillment I long for. 

It’s debilitating. 

I watch more TikToks and more pretty and healthy and happy and wise people tell me the secrets to getting more out of life and I mourn. 

Why can’t I do what they’re doing? 

Shaky hands and derailed trains of thought from more coffee because I wanted more time to sleep in the morning. 

I spend more time in front of a screen, I get more migraines and mysterious aches and I take more painkillers. 

How many more days until the weekend? 

When did I become so much more conscious of my body?

The things it does well,

the things it doesn’t.

The wrinkles on my forehead are more evident and more of my friends are getting botox because we’re 24 and already afraid of our fleeting youth. 

So, I buy more serums and creams and vitamins, hooked by their promises to make everything better.

To make me better. 

And there’s always more I’m expected to know. 

More discoveries to marvel at, data to interpret, and articles to read.

More shows to watch, more apps to download.

There’s more bacteria to inhale and exhale, more foods to avoid, more celebrity controversies, more planets and galaxies and chances to reveal we aren’t alone. 

More carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, more trees cut down, more trash piling up in apartment building dumpsters and highway medians and the ocean when we are careless. 

They can take a little more. 

Another earthquake, another wildfire, another hurricane. Ice is melting, the temperature is rising, species are disappearing, and now I have to pay my student loans?

There’s always more to worry about. 

More news alerts on my phone because more people used more guns to take more lives.

More condolences and more excuses in lieu of change. 

More sadness and anger because of it.

We can’t take any more. 

We’re flooded with more opinions on what is right and wrong. 

The black and white, the left and right, stretch to further extremes. 

The gray areas and middle grounds where we could once find understanding dissipate into outrageous norms and nothing surprises me anymore. 

It’s exhausting.

I find myself more emotional these days. 

Sometimes it’s irritation and resentment.

Or overwhelming anxiety. 

I pity myself when my problems feel so big, and sink into self-loathing when I remember they’re not. 

But this makes the highs that much more important.

How good it feels to laugh, to be proud of something, or simply feel sunshine on my face. 

I collect and cling to these moments because they are my very essence.

I look through my photos fondly and think about putting them in an album.

Then I remember how much more I’ve become like my mom.  

I feel more out of touch with my roots.

Maybe because I’ve put down new ones.

Different isn’t always better or worse. 

Sometimes it’s just different. 

I’m starting to understand that more. 

But I still have a ways to go.

More to learn, more to see, more to do.

How could I not want more?