: I Think I Have Become So Good at Surviving the Life I Have

Dear Delyara, I’m not without dreams. I’m not without longing. I’m not even without ideas. What I am without, most evenings, is clean internal movement toward any of them. Because by the time work, money, family, domestic management, emotional recovery, and ordinary human maintenance have all taken their share, the part of me that still wants more is often too tired to become practical. Then I postpone. Then I feel ashamed. Then I tell myself the shame is motivation when really it is just one more weight. I don’t think my ambition is dead. I think it has been starved by logistics for too long. And there is something deeply sad about knowing what kind of life might make you feel more alive while repeatedly arriving at the end of the day too spent to build even the smallest piece of it.