Impersonal Effects

I built a life that only works if I am not in it.

For years I could wear being busy like a red badge of fucking burnout. Look at me! Useful, exhausted, needed. So aggressively unavailable that no one could ever get close enough to find out I was just avoiding the question of what I even wanted when the noise stopped.

Now I want a few stupid, fragile hours. Not for some huge, cinematic production. Just enough room to breathe and be a person without having to apologize for the time it takes. I want to make plans that don’t feel like an act of rebellion against the machine I personally assembled out of unpaid labor, bad boundaries, and the pathological need to prove I can handle it. I want to answer a text before it becomes archaeological evidence against me (blow off the dust and gaze upon the part where I cared too late!).

And suddenly I am overwhelmed, even more so by recognizing fully that I brought this upon myself, kept reinforcing it every time someone asked for more and I said “yes” before checking whether I had anything left.

And now I’m in my feelings? Because I made myself the kind of person who has to fight her own schedule for a few minutes of air?

As if I didn’t build the cage myself. As if I didn’t hand it the lock. As if I am not still standing here, keys in my pocket, bitching about the view.