I Think I Have Become So Busy Keeping My Life Running That I No Longer Know If I’m Still Choosing It

Dear Delyara, That question arrived slowly. Not because I stopped caring. Because I became efficient enough to keep going without needing to answer it too often. Work, school, bills, dinner, laundry, doctor, shopping, house, children, family, text messages, calendars, all of it moving in a loop convincing me that motion itself must count as meaning because otherwise the whole machinery becomes too painful to examine. But lately, I can feel the question under everything: Is this still a chosen life? Or just a maintained one? And if it is mostly maintained, when did that happen? At what point did function start replacing direction? At what point did “managing” become the main verb? That question hurts because I do not have an easy answer. Only a growing discomfort with how little space I have to hear myself clearly over the machinery.