I Thought I Was Lazy — I Was Just Out of Decisions

I used to think something was wrong with my brain.

Because at some point, I stopped being able to decide things.

Not big, life-altering decisions.
Small ones. Embarrassingly small ones.

What to make for dinner.
Which email to answer first.
Whether to unload the dishwasher now or later — and then spending twenty minutes thinking about it without doing either.

I could plan a child’s birthday party with spreadsheets and themes and backup plans for rain.

But ask me what I wanted to eat?

Immediate shutdown.

It wasn’t dramatic.
It was quiet.
A kind of mental buffering wheel that never finished loading.

And because it looked like procrastination from the outside, I labeled it accordingly.

Lazy.
Unmotivated.
Undisciplined.
Apparently allergic to “just getting on with it.”

Which was confusing, considering how much effort I was putting into not deciding.

I wasn’t avoiding decisions because I didn’t care.

I was avoiding them because my brain was tired of being the only one that noticed everything.

Like every tab was already open.
Like the idea of adding one more choice might cause a system-wide crash.

So when someone says, “Just decide,” it lands about as well as “just relax.”

Helpful in theory.
Infuriating in practice.

By the time I hit this stage, I had already decided plenty of things that day.

I had decided:

who needed what
what couldn’t be forgotten
what might fall apart if I didn’t remember it
how to emotionally manage everyone else’s moods
which problems were urgent
which ones could wait
which ones would quietly turn into emergencies later

None of those decisions came with a checkbox or a gold star.

They just… happened.
Invisibly.
Constantly.

So when I froze over whether to respond to a text or let it sit, it wasn’t because I suddenly forgot how to function.

It was because my brain had already spent its daily allowance on choices no one saw.

The more overloaded I felt, the more judgment piled on top of it.

I wasn’t just stuck —
I was ashamed of being stuck.

Why can’t I just pick something?
Why is this so hard for me?
Other people manage this without turning it into a whole internal debate.

Which only made deciding harder.

Because now every choice came with a side of self-criticism.

From the outside, it looked like inaction.

From the inside, it felt like effort without movement.

Like revving an engine in neutral.

There’s a specific version of this that shows up in motherhood — the kind where you’re not deciding what you want.

You’re deciding what works best for everyone else.

What keeps things running.
What avoids meltdowns.
What prevents future problems.
What causes the least friction.

So by the time you’re asked to decide something for yourself — even something small — your brain responds with a firm, exhausted no.

This is the part where I used to panic.

Because if I couldn’t decide simple things, what did that say about me?

Was I losing my edge?
My competence?
My ability to handle life?

I mistook depletion for deterioration.

And once I saw that,
something subtle shifted.

Not my energy.
Not my to-do list.

Just the pause
where the judgment usually showed up.