In college, I remember one day with painful clarity. Math courses that felt completely beyond me, a keycard that wouldn't work, that familiar sense of impending doom settling in. On the walk back to my dorm I made a small plan: get some Chinese food, go to my room, be done. That was my one thing. The only thing standing between me and a complete unraveling.
Right outside the door, I tripped. The bag tipped. Containers split open. Lo mein, everywhere, on the worn disgusting dorm entryway floor.
I sat down. Right there. And sobbed. Not a little cry. Full, heaving, someone-died grief. Over Chinese food. On the floor.
At 31, newly engaged, new mom, building a brand, working full time — I've lived that moment so many times I've lost count. Accidentally washing a diaper. A doorknob catching my pocket. Getting a text asking for something when I have exactly zero percent left to give. Every single time: the deep exhale, the silent scream, the blood rushing to my head, and the completely disproportionate urge to slam a cabinet door.
We have soft-close cabinets. They just... ease shut. Mockingly.
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Every day had one moment that felt like the final straw. And that genuinely confused me because I am not this person. I'm free-spirited. I'm the "mistakes happen, it's okay!" friend. So what was happening?
The difference between the Chinese food day and my life now wasn't subtle. That was one bad day. This was thirty-one days. Then sixty-one. Constant, relentless, out-of-proportion reactions to things that shouldn't have warranted them. I talked to my psychiatrist. I started wondering if I had finally crossed into permanent adult unhappiness and there was no coming back.
What I eventually understood was that none of these moments existed in isolation. They were the last drop in a glass that had been filling since the moment I woke up. Baby toys. Ms. Rachel on the TV. The dog licking himself at full volume. My fiancé asking me questions about things "only I know." A task list that never got shorter. A running internal monologue about the economy, job stability, what's for dinner, the future, EI·YO, the baby, Winston, all of it, all at once, every day.
None of it unusual. All of it relentless.
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I had been asking myself the wrong question. I kept thinking I wanted fewer responsibilities, fewer demands, fewer people needing things from me. But that wasn't it. I didn't want a smaller life. I wanted a less combative one.
The baby still needed to be fed. The house still needed to function. Existing just felt like work.
I don't think I'm an angry person. I think my days have been full and fast and demanding, and I've been moving through them without much ease. The anger was information. A signal that something needed to change, not proof that something was wrong with me.
That realization was the first thing in a long time that actually brought me relief.
It didn't fix everything. But it changed the question I was asking. And sometimes that's where it starts.
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