At 45 I Realized I Didn’t Know Who I Was. A Journal Helped Me Remember
Part 1. Life Inside a Case
Every morning I woke up with the same thought: “Here we go again.”
There was no fear. No pain. Just this gray, sticky exhaustion.
Imagine you’re driving a car. The scenery outside the window keeps changing, but you’re looking at it through dirty glass. You can see everything, but somehow… it doesn’t feel real.
Morning coffee stopped having a smell.
Meetings that used to energize me now only irritated me.
I looked at my employees and thought:
“Why are you all rushing around? It’s all going to end anyway.”
I got angry at them. At my wife. At traffic.
My wife, Lena, tried to talk to me. I brushed her off.
The kids called — I answered briefly, straight to the point.
It felt like if I showed any real emotion, I would fall apart.
So I built a wall around myself. Solid concrete.
I played the role of a “successful man” very well.
In public I joked, talked about the news, politics, construction materials.
But inside there was a ringing emptiness.
Like an abandoned apartment where all the furniture has been taken out.
One evening I was sitting in my car in the courtyard of my own building. I had just arrived home, turned off the engine, and realized I didn’t want to get out.
Inside the apartment there was Lena, dinner, conversations.
Out here there was silence.
I sat in the car for two hours. Just staring at a streetlamp.
Later my wife was upset that I came home so late.
But I couldn’t explain why I stayed outside that long.
I didn’t understand it myself.
Part 2. Suspecting Depression
I didn’t want to go to a doctor.
“Men don’t cry. Men don’t complain.”
That’s what we were taught.
But the internet — for better or worse — showed me a depression test.
I took it out of curiosity.
Result: “Severe depression. You should consult a specialist.”
I smirked and closed the tab.
What depression? I have everything.
Still, the thought stayed with me.
One day while scrolling through my feed, I saw an ad for Reflectly — a journaling app.
“Mood tracking. Reflection.”
It sounded kind of feminine to me, honestly.
But then I remembered something.
When I was about 14, I had a notebook where I wrote silly poems and thoughts. I actually liked doing that.
So I thought: “It can’t make things worse.”
And I downloaded it.
The first entries were terrible.
I would open the app and write things like:
“Tired. Everything annoys me. Work is exhausting.”
The app asked me to choose an emotion.
I picked “anger” or “sadness”.
Day after day — the same thing.
I felt like an idiot writing complaints into empty space.
But then something strange happened.
After a couple of weeks I scrolled back through the calendar and noticed a pattern.
My “anger” was tied to specific meetings.
And to Sunday evenings.
I had never noticed that before. I just felt angry.
But the journal showed me a map.
It showed me where the wind was really coming from.
Part 3. A Voice from the Past
After about a month of writing, I noticed something else.
Sometimes, between reports about “bad days,” I wrote about other things.
One entry slipped in:
“Today I accidentally heard Kino on the radio. Tsoi. I was singing along in the car. Lena looked at me like I was weird. But suddenly I felt lighter. Remembered how at 16 I wanted to buy a guitar.”
I deleted that entry. It felt unnecessary.
But a week later I wrote something else:
“Was sitting in traffic thinking. If I wasn’t me right now, but that kid who wanted to play guitar — what would he say to me?
He’d probably spit and say: ‘Man, you’re boring.’”
And that hit me hard.
I was sitting in my car — again in the car — and realized that I really was boring.
I was boring even to myself.
There was nothing to talk about with myself.
All my thoughts were about work, money, construction.
But where was me?
Where was that kid who wrote poems, listened to Tsoi, and dreamed about starting a band?
That same evening I went online and ordered a guitar.
Nothing fancy — just a decent acoustic one.
Lena thought I had lost my mind.
“Forty-five years old and you decided to play guitar?”
I didn’t answer.
When the guitar arrived, I sat in my chair holding it.
And realized I didn’t remember a single chord.
Not one.
I just held it, ran my hand over the wood and… smiled.
For the first time in a long while.
Part 4. Coming Back to Myself
I started learning again.
YouTube. Tutorials. Whatever I could find.
My fingers didn’t listen to me. My fingertips hurt.
But every evening I gave one hour to this “nonsense”.
At first Lena laughed about it.
Then she got used to it.
And one evening she came into the room and said:
“Play something.”
I played A Star Called Sun by Kino.
Clumsy. Missing chords. Losing rhythm.
But I played it.
And I saw something in her eyes that I hadn’t seen for a long time.
Interest.
At the same time I kept writing in my journal.
But now it wasn’t just “everything annoys me.”
There were notes about songs.
About learning new strumming patterns.
About how it felt when I finally got a chord right.
Something changed in me.
Actually, I became more like my real self.
Work stopped being the center of the universe.
I stopped losing my mind over every missed deadline.
Construction became what it really is: a way to earn money.
But life is not for construction.
Life is for the evening when I sit with my guitar.
For conversations with Lena (we started talking again!).
For trips with my kids that no longer feel like an obligation.
Insight. A Map That Leads Home
You know what I realized?
I used to think a journal was just a place to complain.
Like a psychological trash can — dump your garbage and forget about it.
But it turned out to be something else.
It was a map.
A map that helped me find my way back.
Back to the 16-year-old version of myself.
To the guy who actually knew what he wanted.
Not a car. Not an apartment.
The ability to feel.
To create.
To laugh.
To play silly songs for his wife.
I didn’t quit my business.
I still visit construction sites and solve problems every day.
But inside me there’s no longer an empty apartment.
Now there’s music playing there.
And I know who owns that apartment.
If you’re reading this and recognize yourself —
the person sitting in the car outside the house and not wanting to go in — try one simple thing:
Start writing.
Not for anyone else.
Just for yourself.
I don’t know if a guitar will be your answer.
Maybe something else is waiting for you deep inside: fishing, painting, woodworking, or simply lying on the couch with a book.
But to find it, you first have to clear away the trash blocking the entrance.
For me, the journal became a shovel.
P.S.
I’m not a psychologist and not some kind of guru.
I’m just a person who almost lost himself and accidentally found himself again somewhere in the back of his memory.
If you’re struggling — don’t just endure it.
Enduring pain doesn’t make you strong.
Strength is admitting you need help.
Whether that help is a friend, a professional, or just a blank page in your phone.