I Can Sustain My Life Well Enough That Other People Probably Think I’m Directed but...

Dear Delyara, I can keep the machine moving. That’s not nothing. But movement is not meaning. Competence is not direction. Maintenance is not a path. I think a lot of women live inside this confusion for years because the outside of life stays busy enough to disguise the inside question. Kids, work, family, money, meals, admin, health, caregiving, all of it creating so much forward motion that no one asks whether the motion still belongs to the self. I’m asking. And I do not always like the answer. Some days, I feel less like a woman moving toward something and more like a system preventing collapse. That is not the same thing. And I am frightened by how easy it would be to live a whole decade inside that difference without fully naming it.