Uncertainty turns my whole nervous system into rehearsal

Dear Delyara, I don’t sit inside not-knowing very well. I rehearse. That’s what I do. I rehearse pain, conversations, explanations, contingencies, emotional responses, self-protection. I try to live the future in small anxious fragments so I won’t be caught off guard later. It doesn’t really protect me. It just makes me tired earlier. Still, I keep doing it. I wish uncertainty felt like openness. Mostly it feels like unpaid emotional labor.