“How have you been?”
It is such a small question.
A handful of words tossed across coffee tables, office hallways, phone calls, and crowded rooms. A question so common that most people answer it before it has even finished being asked.
“I’m good.”
“Doing well.”
“Can’t complain.”
The exchange is completed before either person has had the chance to think.
But every now and then, the question hits differently.
How have you been?
And there is a pause.
Not because the answer is tragic. Not because it is wonderful. Not because there is some dramatic confession waiting to spill out.
But because there is no answer.
Or at least, no simple one.
How have I been?
Compared to when?
Compared to who?
This morning, when the sunlight felt warm on my skin? Last night, when the silence in my room felt heavier than usual? Last year, when I thought I knew where my life was heading? Five years ago, when I was someone entirely different?
How have I been?
The truth is, I do not know.
I have always envied people who seem to carry themselves in neat emotional categories. People who can look at the landscape of their inner world and confidently declare, “I am happy,” or “I am sad,” or “I am thriving.”
My inner world has never been so cooperative.
It is weather. It is a collection of contradictions.
It is shifting skies and changing tides.
It is sunlight breaking through storm clouds while rain is still falling.
It is grief sitting beside gratitude.
It is hope sharing a room with exhaustion.
It is feeling everything and understanding none of it completely.
And so when people ask me how I have been, I stand at the edge of myself like a stranger looking into a forest, trying to describe what lives there.
Most days, I settle for “I’m fine.”
Not because it is true.
Not because it is false.
But because it is easier than explaining that I am still translating myself.
The loneliness, however, does not come from not knowing the answer.
The loneliness comes from wanting to stay with the question.
Because somewhere along the way, I realized that most conversations are designed to skim the surface of life. We exchange updates, observations, and anecdotes like polite offerings.
The weather.
Work.
Traffic.
Weekend plans.
Safe territories.
Meanwhile, there are people among us carrying entire universes beneath their ribs.
Questions about love.
Questions about purpose.
Questions about whether we are becoming the people we once promised ourselves we would be.
Questions about why some memories refuse to leave and why some dreams arrive years too late.
But these questions rarely find daylight.
Not because they do not exist.
Because they are difficult to hand to another person.
You cannot place existential longing on a table between coffee cups and ask someone to pass the sugar.
And yet, some of us spend our lives searching for those conversations.
Not conversations that are intelligent.
Not conversations that are profound for the sake of sounding profound.
But conversations that linger.
Conversations that walk into the dark corners of a person’s soul and sit down without trying to fix anything.
The kind that leave you feeling less alone in your own mind.
Perhaps that is why “How have you been?” feels impossible to answer.
Because the question is too small for the truth.
The truth is that human beings are rarely one thing.
We are unfinished stories speaking in complete sentences.
We are contradictions wearing names.
We are collections of old versions of ourselves trying to coexist under a single skin.
And maybe the most honest answer to the question is not “good” or “bad.”
Maybe it is:
“I am still becoming.”
Or perhaps:
“I am still figuring that out.”
Because some lives are not meant to be summarized.
Some hearts are not meant to fit inside a single word.
And some questions are beautiful precisely because they cannot be answered.
Only lived.
The Dream Catcher 