A journey back to the self society tried to edit

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9mins read . Personal reflection+ Social commentary . February 19, 2026

I was at work when I heard a song playing through the radio. I quickly Shazamed it and realized it was “Lovely” by Billie Eilish and Khalid . A song I’ve always liked.

The piano and their calming voices blend so effortlessly. I never actually had the song on my playlist. I would just enjoy it whenever it appeared. It would pop up randomly, and I’d listen, whether Alexa decided to be the best DJ or it played on the radio wherever I happened to be, and then it would pass. But something was different about today.

I decided to Shazam it and listen to it fully, replaying it again and again while I soaked in the lyrics and the piano rhythm. It’s a rich song with a beautiful flow, the kind that settles quietly into your mind and soul. I found myself paying attention to the words. Especially the part about finding yourself, even if it takes all night and even if it takes forever.

The lyrics sat with me differently this time. Not just words to pass by, but something with a deeper meaning. I found myself reflecting on how far I’ve come, staying in tune with myself despite my struggles with grief, which once made me feel lost and set me a billion steps back from my plans, my goals, my expectations and everything I thought I could do.

My inner self, the positive one, the resilient one, the one who is endlessly optimistic and always sees a brighter picture. The one who knows what she wants and refuses to settle. The one who keeps going no matter what. I lost her.

I lost pieces of myself bit by bit. Whenever I talk with family and friends about how I felt back then, the words never seem enough to describe the heaviness of it. It felt like I had been wiped off the earth. My soul snatched away, leaving only an empty body drifting through life, moving like a zombie.

In the middle of all that confusion, I was scrambling everywhere, trying to get myself back, trying to feel my soul return to my body. But it all felt gone, completely gone, and the more effort I put into trying to be better and find myself again, the more it slipped away from me.

I was scrambling because my soul felt homeless, drifting without direction. You know how in movies someone starving searches through bins, eating whatever they find in desperation? That was me, searching just as desperately for my inner self. My Identity was loss.

Some days I would sleep for barely ten minutes in an entire 24-hour cycle, just before going to work, waking up and questioning why I was even still here. Like a hungry animal searching through a bin, I kept trying. 

I read, ate healthy, listened to lifestyle and wellness podcasts, went to the gym. Trying to be this, trying to be that, all in search of my lost soul. But the more I searched, the worse things seemed to get.

Social media was an even worse place for me in those moments. It only pushed me to dig deeper into the bin, searching for rotten crumbs that left me feeling more miserable, questioning my sanity. So I stayed away from it as much as I could. It felt like a restraining order had been placed on it, distance was the only safety.

When everything I tried didn’t work, I gave up. I just didn’t care as much anymore. I declined completely. I went blank. All the patching, all the little smiles, they disappeared, and I went numb. It was just me, myself, and I (in Beyoncé’s voice).

I got tired of seeking, of searching. Tired of trying to repair, restore, connect the dots, feel alive, bring my soul back using every resource I had. Stopping the search felt like giving up on myself. And maybe I did. I didn’t care about anything anymore. Nothing about me seemed to matter.

Everywhere around me felt covered in dark clouds. At the beginning of the song, the lyrics describe something like “thought I found a way out, but you never go away” still trying to escape, but the feelings refuse to leave, and the writer almost surrenders to whatever is happening. That was exactly how I felt.

Then the writer begins to hope again, longing for a better feeling, searching for a place to hide, yet finding none nearby. And then the lyrics say:

“Wanna feel alive, outside I can’t fight my fear

Isn’t it lovely all alone? 

Heart made of glass, my mind of stone

Tear me to pieces, skin to bone

Hello, welcome home”

The exact moment things changed for me was when I sat down with myself through the pain, just me alone with everything that had once overshadowed me.

Instead of continuing the search for relief,  searching for my lost soul, my inner identity. I simply sat with myself. I stopped reading self-help books, stopped watching motivational podcasts, stopped filling my algorithm with inspiration. It was at the point when I stopped trying that the worst happened… only to become the beginning of something better.

I was scrambling through every wellness trend. I hopped on yoga, breathing techniques, fitness routines, therapy, all the things they preach about in this age whenever someone is searching for peace or healing. I tried it all, hoping something would fix me, but nothing seemed to reach where I was hurting.

Sitting with myself was the most painful thing, because I had stopped trying. And to stop trying can feel like losing hope. It was more painful to sit there and admit to myself, “This might actually be it forever.” That realization was gut-wrenching, the most damaging thought of all.

That’s why the lyric “Tear me to pieces, skin to bone” resonated so deeply with me. I felt torn apart, alone in my own world, carrying a kind of pain I had never known before. But after that season of loneliness, depression, and darkness… I began to come home to myself. Just as the song continues after that verse: “Hello, welcome home.”

 Welcome home, Ayomide.

I had originally planned to write a piece inspired by Emma Grede’s Aspire podcast with Angelica Nwandu, where she said, “Everyone should not be moulded into one representation.” But somehow, everything began to align. The song, my journey, my healing. They were all saying the same thing. Coming home to myself meant realising I was never meant to fit into a single mould in the first place.

I once thought I would write about how modern society feels like a mess, especially in the age of social media. People barely get the space to be themselves anymore. Everything pushes toward one acceptable mould. You’re sad? Go to the gym. Do yoga. Try Pilates. Socialize more. Fix it. Heal it. Optimize it. There’s always another prescription, another formula — as if the goal is to escape ourselves instead of understand ourselves.

I can’t count the number of times I’ve sat through therapy sessions just nodding along, pretending to agree, performing a kind of healing just so the session could end and be ticked off as, “At least I tried. At least I did something.” I also can’t count the number of things I’ve done just to make myself feel better  just as society says we should. “Performative healing” 

I’ve tried breathing techniques, and they work for a while and sometimes just in the moment. But the feeling of being lost and soulless always returns. Can I really practice breathing exercises 24/7? Can anyone? Can we stay at the gym all day, every day? Take walks nonstop? Practice positivity every second? Obviously, no.

So after everything society has to offer is exhausted, what are we left with? Ourselves. Even if you have people around you all the time, you can’t always be present with them. Sometimes you drift, sometimes you zone out. And when you do, who are you left with? Yourself.

Don’t get me wrong,  many wellness techniques really do help. I’m not trying to discredit the people who genuinely work to help others become better within themselves, beyond just social media algorithms. But the question is: for how long? And how sustainable is it?

I use myself as a case study. Not enough to prove anything definitive, I know. But through conversations, stories, and everyday life, I can’t help noticing the pattern: we are all slowly being moulded into one representation.

It often feels like we’re all being told, “Just copy what this person did. It worked for them, so it should work for you. And if it doesn’t, then you must be doing it wrong or you’re just impatient.”

Taking it even further, it often feels like a constant tossing back and forth, all in the name of trying to make you “okay,” when really you’re just scraping the same bin that was never going to heal you. A rinse-and-repeat cycle. We’ve all been moulded, directly or indirectly, to fit into the same shape and form.

We see representations of different cultures, which should mean different individuals, yet we’re all still expected to be the same. Society puts us in a box. Our minds in a box, our vision, our expression, our abilities. Even those who believe they’re thinking outside the box often don’t realize they’re still standing inside it.

We hear subtle comments disguised as compliments, “Oh, interesting, I never knew you could speak like that.”Remarks like that are often directed at someone who is quiet or doesn’t appear, on the surface, to be intellectual. Yet the same backhanded praise is rarely given to someone who wears glasses, speaks often, and already fits society’s idea of what intelligence is supposed to look like.

Or when people act surprised that a doctor can be the life of the party instead of always reading medical books and saving lives. Or when women are described as “beauty with brains,” as if intelligence were only expected from those society doesn’t consider attractive. All these backhanded compliments come from the same place. We’ve put ourselves into checked boxes with little room to be anything beyond them.

For so long, the world teaches you quietly, persistently that you must shape yourself into something acceptable, something understood, something easily labeled. But what if the real journey isn’t becoming presentable… what if it’s becoming original again in your loneliness and your shape and form?

P.S. Links to the song and podcast referenced are embedded within the text.