I’m scared I’m building a life around coping instead of living

Dear Delyara, Work, home, school, money, messages, appointments, the endless practical architecture of ordinary life — some weeks I can feel that I am no longer really choosing much. I am just coping efficiently through the structure. And that frightens me. Because coping can look so respectable from outside. Productive, organised, devoted, resilient. Meanwhile inside, a person can slowly start disappearing into usefulness without any single dramatic collapse to warn them. I do not want to wake up in ten years and realise I survived beautifully while living badly. That fear has started speaking louder in me lately.