I Can’t Separate My Life Into Clean Causes Anymore

Dear Delyara, Money stress makes my marriage feel narrower. Marriage loneliness makes my body feel heavier. Body fear makes my patience shorter. Shorter patience makes motherhood guiltier. Motherhood guilt makes me need more quiet. More quiet makes me feel lonely. Loneliness makes me want contact. Contact exhausts me. And around and around it goes. I want a clean answer so badly. Something I can point to and say, “There. That is the problem. Fix that and I’ll come back to myself.” But I don’t have that. I have a life where the sources of pain are braided so tightly that pulling one thread seems likely to tighten the others. That uncertainty has turned me into someone who thinks constantly and acts too little. I don’t like who that makes me feel like.