Sometimes I think love changes shape before we even notice it. You start out open and sure, feeling seen in a way that feels new, and then slowly the balance shifts. It’s not one moment or one fight. More like a steady wearing down, quiet things you stop saying, small things you overlook because they don’t seem worth the argument. And then at some point you realize you’ve been adjusting who you are just to keep the peace. It’s strange how the need to feel close can make silence feel safer than honesty. You tell yourself this is what love …
Soft Exits
What I Learned When I Stopped Fighting My Own Head
Some mornings I wake up already tired, not in my body exactly, more in my head, like the thinking part started early and the rest of me is still catching up, and I can feel it pulling me into half-written emails, old conversations, small things that shouldn’t matter much but somehow carry weight anyway. It doesn’t feel intense or loud, just constant, like something that’s always been part of the room, part of the air, part of how the day starts, and because it’s familiar I usually don’t question it. For a long time I assumed this was …
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Still Learning to Leave Working Things Alone
I keep bumping into this gap between what I already know works and what I still find myself reaching for, and it doesn’t feel like a contradiction so much as a habit I haven’t outgrown yet. On some level, I understand that the things that actually build over time tend to be repetitive and fairly plain, the kind of actions you can do without much thinking once you’ve learned them, and yet there’s another part of me that keeps waiting for effort to feel more alive than that. The discomfort doesn’t show up as overwhelm. It’s subtler. A kind of …
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Standing at the Back of My Own Line
I’ve been trying to name a feeling that doesn’t really want a name. It’s not exhaustion exactly, and it’s not confusion either. Days move along, things get done, and if you asked me what I did, I could tell you without lying. Still, there’s this sense that I’m slightly out of frame in my own life, close enough to be involved, not close enough to feel fully there. Like I’m walking alongside my intentions instead of inside them. I notice it most in how easily I adjust without thinking. Someone else’s urgency sets the tempo. Someone else’s …
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The Second That Stayed
I was already sitting there, screen open, cursor blinking in that patient way it always does, and this should have been the easiest part, the part where you just start and let the rest sort itself out, except my body stayed put, not frozen, not resisting, just not moving forward yet. That surprised me more than it should have, because until then I’d trusted starting to take care of itself. I’d built my days on that trust. Sit down, begin, let momentum do the boring, useful work of carrying me through. Even when I felt tired, that first step …
Somewhere Between Starting and Staying
A while back, I noticed that I could spend an entire morning at my desk and still feel unsure about what I’d actually done. Not because I was distracted or wasting time, but because I was busy in a way that left no footprint. The document would be open, the last paragraph reread a few times, a word changed and then changed back, the structure reconsidered, the coffee reheated, and somehow the hours would pass without resistance. It didn’t feel wrong while it was happening. I wasn’t avoiding the work. I was close to it. Close enough that …
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She Didn’t Send the Message
He said he’d call later and she heard it the way you hear most things that don’t come with a time, not trusting it, not dismissing it, just letting it sit somewhere loose. The evening moved on without asking her permission. Food happened. The kitchen got messy. She sat down, stood up, sat again, and only much later noticed how often her phone had been in her hand without her remembering picking it up. The message came when the night was already tired. He said he was exhausted. He added a quick sorry. He didn’t say anything about the call. …