Sophie’s Choice

Jun 28
2 min read

Updated: Jul 3

“Life really does begin at forty. Up until then, you are just doing research.” ~ Carl Jung

I recently turned 40.

There were times when I genuinely didn’t believe I would reach this milestone.

By society’s standards, my life hasn’t followed the expected path. I’m not on the property ladder. I don’t have a high-flying career. I haven’t started a family.

Surprisingly, I don’t feel as though I’ve failed.

For much of my adult life, I measured myself against milestones that belonged to other people. I spent years wondering why life seemed to come so much more easily to everyone else.

After years of navigating the mental health system, I was eventually diagnosed as autistic.

The diagnosis didn’t change who I was; it changed how I understood myself. It became one of the defining moments of my life. As is often the case with a late diagnosis, the relief of finally having an explanation was followed by grief for the years spent trying to navigate a world without that understanding.

Looking back, I can see that I wasn’t totally failing at life - I was trying to succeed according to rules that were never designed with people like me in mind. It was difficult to articulate what I didn’t even understand about my own mind.

That shift in understanding changed something deeper for me. It made me question how much of any life story is shaped by interpretation rather than fact. How much of identity is constructed through language, comparison, and expectation.

What happens when you stop measuring yourself against a script you didn’t write? What happens when you start to rewrite it instead?

For a long time, I didn’t have a clear answer. I still don’t - but I do have lots of thoughts on it.

So, as one chapter closes, another begins.

I’m buying a campervan.

Not because I’m running away, but because I’m finally curating a life that doesn’t feel like something I need to escape from.

Photography. Travel. Quiet places. Meaningful conversations. A roof over my head that lets me wake up somewhere new and notice the details other people hurry past.