There are things I once thought were too heavy to carry, so I carried them anyway.
I thought perhaps I was simply tired. Perhaps the work had taken too much of me. Perhaps the noise, the expectations, the constant feeling of being chased had slowly made my world smaller.
But when I finally stepped back, I found something I had forgotten: I still had myself.
I knew what I was doing. I knew why I was doing it. I knew what needed my attention, and I knew when to step away. The things I thought were consuming me did not hold me as tightly as I was told they did. I could make space. I could draw boundaries. And strangely, nothing disappeared.
Perhaps I was never as lost in it as you believed I was.
Perhaps I was simply carrying more than you ever saw.
I have spent so long trying to understand what would finally be enough. I changed this. I gave up that. I followed the path I was told would be better. But when I finally learned how to walk it, somehow, it was still the wrong direction.
Maybe that is the most exhausting kind of sadness; to keep giving, and still be made to feel like you have given nothing.
I am tired of trying to find the shape of the woman you want me to be. Somewhere along the way, I became so busy trying to become enough for you that I forgot to ask whether you ever thought I was enough as I was.
So perhaps the question was never how much more can I do? or what else should I change?
Perhaps it is simply,
Does the world only move around you?
Because there’s also a world beyond you.
Another life. Another heart. Another self.
I have spent years putting aside just to make room for everything else. And I am tired. Not because I stopped caring, but perhaps because I have cared for too long without knowing where I was supposed to fit in all of it.
AR
28.08.26
