I packed fruit into three lunchboxes and realised none of it was what I wanted

Dear Delyara, Apples for one child, grapes for another, banana cut in half because whole bananas apparently no longer suit the current phase of the week. I arranged them into their little compartments with the usual efficiency and then stood there looking at the fruit bowl like it had become a small witness to how family life works. Everything chosen around other people’s bodies. Other people’s routines. Other people’s preferences. I don’t mean that bitterly. I mean it truthfully. There are so many small moments where I realise how easily my own tastes disappear from the architecture of the day. Not through cruelty. Through habit. Through love. Through function. Through the quiet assumption that I will, somehow, fit myself in later. Sometimes I do. Often, I don’t.