I No Longer Know Which Feelings Are Warnings and Which Are Just Exhaustion Wearing a Serious Face

Dear Delyara, A bad feeling about work. A low mood in the marriage. A strong need for distance. A sense that something in my life structure is wrong. A sudden wave of restlessness that makes me want to change everything. Then the questions begin. Is this wisdom? Burnout? Hormones? Grief? Old trauma? Ordinary stress? A real sign? A temporary distortion? I spend so much time trying to interpret myself correctly that I sometimes feel I am living one step removed from my own life. Not in it, but studying it. Observing symptoms. Evaluating instincts. Delaying action until certainty arrives — and certainty, of course, rarely does. That is the exhausting part. Not only the feelings. The fact that I no longer trust my own first reading of them.