You Can't Lose Time You Were Never Present For

The devastating relief of realizing you can't mourn time you were never actually in.

All those essays I wrote in July about flinching, about dancing, about trusting orange over purple - I thought they were about different things. Learning to be braver, more alive, more present.

But sitting here at the start of August, I realize they were all evidence of the same recognition.

This came forward for me as I was looking at old photos, particularly old wedding photos, and I didn’t recognize the person staring back at me.

Not because I've changed dramatically or because time has been unkind. But because I'm looking at someone who was never actually there. Someone who was always searching for something else, somewhere else, while his life happened around him.

His eyes aren't quite focused on the camera. They're looking past it, past the moment, past his own existence toward some unnamed better version of himself or his circumstances. Someone who was homesick for a place that didn't exist while standing in the only home he'd ever have.

This month revealed something that changed how I see every year I've lived so far: you can't lose time you were never present for.

The Searcher in His Own Life

What I thought was growth this month was actually archaeology - excavating myself from under years of searching.

I used to think certain periods of my life were wasted because I gave them to the wrong circumstances. The relationship that lasted too long. The job that drained my life force. The years of saying yes to things I didn't want while my actual preferences sat unexpressed.

But that's not what happened at all.

I gave those years to the wrong version of myself - a version that was constantly in transit, always looking for what came next instead of inhabiting what was actually there.

Looking at photo after photo from different eras, I see the same quality in this person's face: the perpetual motion of searching without knowing what for. Just this constant sense of "not here, not this, somewhere else, something else" that kept him moving through his days like he was walking through a waiting room for his real life to begin.

Those years weren't mine because I wasn't in them. I was always elsewhere.

What I Was Actually Avoiding

Here's what I finally understand about all that searching: it wasn't aimless wandering. It was active avoidance.

There is pain in presence. Aliveness isn't always joyful. And being present to my actual life would have meant feeling things I wasn't ready to feel - the slow recognition that certain situations weren't working, my own dissatisfaction with choices I'd made, the ordinary pain of realizing what I had wasn't what I wanted but not knowing what I did want.

But more than that. I was hiding from the things I actually wanted in my life.

Desires that felt too dangerous to acknowledge because feeling them would have required dismantling things I'd spent years building. The deep yearning for different kinds of relationships, work that felt aligned with who I was becoming, preferences that didn't fit the story I'd constructed about who I was supposed to be.

The searching was anesthesia disguised as purpose. A way of staying in motion so I never had to sit still long enough to feel that fundamental misalignment. Because feeling it would have meant acknowledging that much of what I'd built was wrong for me.

The Math I've Been Getting Wrong

Uninhabited time wasn't just absence. It was the time I spent protecting myself from my own wanting.

Every moment I spent looking past my actual life toward some imagined better moment was a moment stolen from being present to what was actually there - including the discomfort of recognizing that what was there wasn't what I wanted.

You can't mourn time you were never present for. You can't grieve a life you were never willing to fully feel.

Those years don't count against my remaining time because I wasn't spending actual time during them. I was spending avoidance time, searching time, anywhere-but-here time - but not the kind of time that lives in your body, that flows through your awareness, that belongs to you because you're actually in it.

The Courage to Want What You Want

July taught me that the real courage isn't learning to be authentic or finding your true self. The real courage is learning to be present even when presence includes pain. Even when being present means feeling wants that would require changing everything.

Even when inhabiting your own life means acknowledging that the life you've built isn't the one you actually want.

This changes everything about how I understand the years ahead. I'm not trying to make up for lost time because there was no time to lose. I'm not racing against some clock because the clock was never running on actual time anyway.

I'm just finally learning the difference between searching and inhabiting. Between looking for my life and living it.

What This Means for Time That's Left

Every moment from here forward that I choose presence over searching - orange over purple, dancing over standing still, feeling what I want instead of avoiding it - that's time that finally belongs to me.

Not because I'm becoming someone better or more authentic, but because I'm finally showing up to the experience instead of using it as a launching pad to somewhere else.

When I catch myself searching for the better moment, the right choice, the perfect response, I pause and ask: what would it feel like to just be here? To want what I want without apologizing for it or searching for a more acceptable version?

When someone asks me what I want for dinner and I feel the old impulse to say "whatever you want," I notice the searching starting - that immediate movement away from my own preference - and choose to be present to what I actually want instead.

The Time That Was Always Available

This month stripped away every story I'd been telling myself about growth and healing and becoming. What's left is simpler and more radical: every moment you spend searching for a better version of your life is a moment spent absent from the life you actually have.

But every moment you choose to be present instead of elsewhere, to feel what you're feeling instead of what you think you should be feeling, to want what you want instead of what's easier to want - that's time that actually belongs to you.

Your favorite color might change without your permission. Your marriage might end when you finally admit what you actually want. But the capacity to inhabit your own moments, to be present even when presence includes discomfort? That's always available.

Not as something to search for or work toward, but as something to choose, moment by moment, want by want, orange preference by orange preference.

The years I spent searching weren't a mistake. They were just the time it took to finally get tired of being everywhere except where I was.

And the time that's here right now? It's waiting for me to finally stop looking past it and start living in it.

Time is relative. Even if only an hour is left in your life, that hour can contain more aliveness than years of uninhabited moments. You just have to be willing to stop searching long enough to actually be there for it.

The music is still playing. Your body still knows how to move. Your wants are still there, waiting to be felt.

The only question is: will you finally stop searching and start inhabiting?

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About Alex

I’m Alex Lovell — political psychologist, yoga therapist, and writer.

Lived homeless. Been divorced. Survived a seven-car pileup with a semi. Fell in love with questions that don’t have easy answers. I’ve met a lot of thresholds. Even the one before death.

These days, I split my time between research, writing, and holding space for people figuring out who they are after everything shifted.

This Substack is where I make sense of things out loud.
I write for people in transition — between roles, beliefs, relationships, selves.
The ones quietly wondering, “What now?” but allergic to one-size-fits-all answers.

Sometimes I quote research. Sometimes I quote my own nervous system.
One speaks in data, the other in sensation. I’ve stopped choosing sides.

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