The blank page is the scariest part.
Not because there’s nothing to say,
but because it asks you what you’ll do next.
I’ve been thinking a lot lately about where I am in my life.
I’m thirty-two now.
And in many ways, I’ve lived the dreams of my younger self.
I built a brand from nothing.
I opened a shop.
I survived crises that should have broken me.
I stood behind fashion shows I never believed I’d have the chance to create, in Beirut and abroad.
Surrounded by a community that became family.
I taught generations of students who taught me just as much in return.
For a long time, the page was never blank.
There was always something urgent.
Something to react to.
Something to survive.
I realize that from the outside,
It looks like I’m moving confidently
From one achievement to the next.
But the truth is: I’m at a crossroad.
And I don’t think this feeling is mine alone.
We’ve spent the last five years in survival mode.
Revolution. Collapse. The blast. Pandemics. Wars.
Crisis after crisis.
Survival filled the page for us.
It gave us direction.
It told us what mattered.
Now the noise has quieted.
Just enough that many of us are standing in the silence,
Unsure of what to write next.
Success doesn’t silence uncertainty.
Stability doesn’t erase confusion.
And this is something we rarely talk about.
Sometime this year, in the wake of my breakup,
I felt forced to stop.
Not to collapse.
Just to pause.
And in that pause, I found myself staring at the page.
That’s when I started thinking of me before..
Thinking of my younger self.
The person I was in my early twenties.
Back then, I lived with borderline emotional patterns.
I was intense. Reckless. Impulsive. Dramatic.
Everything felt urgent.
Everything mattered too much.
The page was never blank then.
It was overflowing.
I spent five years in psychoanalysis working through that period of my life.
I say this openly because somehow therapy is still taboo.
And because what looks like confidence or strength is often assumed to be natural.
It isn’t.
It’s learned.
It’s practiced.
It’s work.
Therapy didn’t give me answers.
It cleared the page.
Nobody will ever tell you that,
But it’s possible to grieve that.
I don’t miss the chaos.
But I miss the fire.
The imagination.
The way pain turned into movement.
The way intensity made life feel full,
Even when it was unsafe.
I think many of us are feeling something similar now.
After years of crisis,
We’re learning that healing leaves space behind.
And space can feel terrifying.
Where do you go when you’re no longer surviving?
What do you build when urgency no longer decides for you?
How do you live when your world finally quiets down?
You can grieve your healing.
You can miss the versions of yourself you had to leave behind.
You can feel lost even when things are, objectively, going well.
I don’t have the answers yet.
But I’m sharing this because maybe someone out there feels the same.
Maybe someone thinks they’re alone in this moment of stillness.
Maybe someone believes they’re supposed to have life figured out by now,
When in reality so many of us are rebuilding our identities after years of instability.
If there’s one thing I know, it’s this:
Healing doesn’t end the story,
It just gives you a new chapter.
And sometimes the blank page is the scariest part.
-
Still (carefully) recklessly yours,
Eric Mathieu Ritter