V1L3 | I Thought Something Was Wrong — I Was Just Fighting Reality
I used to think I was disorganized.
Reactive.
Bad at handling life.
The kind of person who got overwhelmed by things other people seemed to manage just fine.
Small things would knock me sideways.
A late pickup.
A change of plans.
A kid melting down when I’d already rehearsed the day in my head like a dress rehearsal no one else attended.
And every time it happened, I’d think:
Why can’t I handle this better?
I wasn’t just tired.
I was braced.
My nervous system lived like everything was a five-alarm emergency —
even when nothing was technically wrong.
Which was confusing.
Because from the outside, things looked… fine.
Annoying, sure.
Chaotic, occasionally.
But not emergency-level sirens and internal alarms are fine.
I didn’t understand why until a moment that had nothing to do with me.
The Walmart Moment
I ran into a neighbor at Walmart.
Actually — everyone did.
Because her toddler was having a legendary meltdown.
Full-body protest.
Screaming.
Limp-noodle resistance like he was auditioning for a documentary on injustice.
You know the kind.
I braced myself for her reaction —
for the panic, the apologies, the please-don’t-judge-me energy.
But when I saw her?
She was… fine.
Not glowing.
Not serene.
Just calm.
She handled it, finished what she needed to do, and left like this was just… a thing that happened.
Because apparently, for some people, it is.
Later — hiding in my pantry with chocolate I didn’t even want — it hit me:
If that had been me, I would’ve been wrecked.
I would’ve replayed it the entire drive home.
Wondered who saw.
What they thought.
What it said about me as a mother.
As a person.
As someone who should probably be better at Walmart by now.
She probably never thought about it again.
And that’s when the uncomfortable question showed up:
What if my life isn’t harder —
what if my brain just won’t stop fighting it?
I realized I wasn’t reacting to what was happening.
I was reacting to the fact that it wasn’t happening the way I expected.
Traffic shouldn’t be like this.
My kid shouldn’t be melting down.
This day wasn’t supposed to go this way.
Every should was me arguing with reality.
And losing.
The more I tried to control it, the tighter my chest felt.
I thought I was anxious because I wasn’t organized enough.
But the truth was simpler — and harder to sit with:
I didn’t trust life to unfold without my supervision.
So I stayed tense.
Urgent.
On edge.
Not because something bad was happening —
but because it might.
And my nervous system couldn’t tell the difference.
The shift didn’t come from therapy.
Or meditation.
Or a montage where everything softens and the music swells.
It came the day I noticed how much energy I was spending arguing.
Instead of thinking,
This shouldn’t be happening,
I caught myself thinking,
Oh. This is happening.
No wisdom.
No acceptance slogans.
Just… noticing.
The moment didn’t improve.
The chaos didn’t resolve.
No one clapped.
But something else did.
I could feel how much of my day
was spent braced
for things that hadn’t happened yet.
And once I noticed that,
it got harder to pretend
I was just “bad at handling life.”
