What the Mind Carries
I’ve been moving through life on autopilot.
Smiling, scheduling, showing up.
Inside? I’m circling.
Not in chaos. Not in crisis. Just in this strange, still ache of depletion.
The outside looks fine — curated, even.
The house is mostly tidy. My daughter laughs. We go on holidays. There’s a lawn.
We’re the picture. But inside me, something never stops moving.
I’m hypervigilant. Always scanning. Always managing.
Even when I’m “off,” I’m on.
And family, I think, should not feel like work. At least not all the time
There are ten thousand things to remember.
From the repetitive — bills to pay, groceries to restock, appointments to reschedule
To the nuanced — the response to a text you haven’t replied to, the tone of a message that still doesn’t sit right.
And the plans. Always plans:
Plan A, Plan B, Plan C.
Because this is who we are, right?
Women. Architects of contingency. Managers of everyone’s experience.
And then a Saturday comes — blue sky, warm sun, a perfect day offered like a gift — and I can’t accept it.
Because I can’t switch off.
Because my brain keeps scanning the edges for what might go wrong.
Because I’ve forgotten how to feel joy without managing it.
Why can’t I let go?
Why is my mind always busy?
What is it working on?
Sometimes I don’t even know what I think anymore.
I skim the surface of every decision, but I never get to sit with anything long enough to know what I truly believe.
I don’t even know what I need.
Why does he not feel it like I do?
My husband — supportive, loving, present — still doesn’t carry the same weight.
Not because he wouldn’t. But because it doesn’t fall on him the way it falls on me.
I sit next to him on the couch and feel miles away.
We watch a movie. I smile. But I’m holding my breath.
Literally.
I catch myself mid-hold, forgetting to exhale.
Why do I do that?
Why do I crave solitude and then feel guilty for wanting it?
Sometimes I dream of disappearing for a night — a quiet hotel, no talking, no touching, no tending.
But then the guilt floods in.
Because I haven’t done enough.
Because the house isn’t spotless.
Because the to-do list still stretches like a second skin.
And yet…
I’ve run mental marathons that no one can see.
And because there’s no physical evidence, it doesn’t count.
Right?
Why do we only believe in exhaustion when it leaves marks?
Why is invisible labour not real unless it’s witnessed?
Why do I shame myself for needing rest when my mind has done the work of ten bodies?
I think I need space.
Headspace. Soul space.
I think I’m yearning to stop living on autopilot — but I’ve been in it so long I can’t even find the start button.
So I write.
Not because I have an answer.
But because maybe this is the first step.
The fifth why never arrives in a scream.
It comes in the whisper you finally make room to hear.
The weight is real.
The work is invisible.
And it is enough to name it.
For now.
