Today I felt like everyone else had more energy for life than I do

Dear Delyara, I know comparison is poisonous, but it found me anyway today. Everyone looked more certain. More responsive. More emotionally available. More enthusiastic about the future. Even the people who were complaining somehow seemed more alive than I felt. I moved through the day doing what needed to be done, but with that awful internal sense that I am lagging behind in some invisible race nobody officially agreed to. I don’t even know what I’m measuring anymore. Success? Ease? Resilience? Belonging? Whatever it is, I felt short of it all day.