I keep hearing this cultural mantra like it's a productivity tip: growth happens outside of your comfort zone.
But the one thing nobody tells you is that "outside your comfort zone" is sometimes just...life body-slamming you repeatedly while you're already tired. And then you're supposed to journal, drink water, and emerge as a wiser, softer, more emotionally regulated version of yourself.
Respectfully, I want to be a brat about it.
Because lately it's been one long group project called discomfort, and I don't remember signing the syllabus.
There's the ache of sick grandparents, watching the people who made" home" feel like a real place become fragile in front of your eyes. And you're supposed to handle that with grace, and show up, and be grateful, and make peace with time doing what time does.
But sometimes I just want to scream, "This is scary and unfair, and I hate that I can't do anything that actually fixes it."
Then there's family. Or what used to be family. Or what I keep trying to rearrange inside my head, like maybe if I think about it differently, it'll stop hurting. An unstable family unit is like living in a house where the floor shifts every time you start to relax. You learn how to listen for the creak before the collapse. You become fluent in reading the room. You become "strong." You perform "strength."
And for the last 34 years of my life...everyone's been clapping for my strength like it's a talent show.
Meanwhile, I'm just...tired.
And the friends part? Whew. That one is quiet but sharp. It's the slow question that creeps into your brain at 2:00 AM: Are you really my friend? Or do you just like access to me? Do you show up for me, or do you show up for the version of me that's helpful, funny, available, low-maintenance, and never "too much?"
I hate that I even have to wonder. I hate that my heart longs to make excuses for people who wouldn't do the same for me. I hate that for me, loyalty looks like self-abandonment dressed as maturity.
And lovers...year. Lovers.
Some people are lessons. Some people are warnings. Some people are a full detour off the freeway with no service and a suspiciously confident GPS saying, "Recalculating..."
Some relationships I wish I never met, not because I didn't feel something, but because I did. Because I gave pieces of myself away like party favors. Because I confused chemistry with care. Because I ignored the soft alarm bells in my body and called romantic.
And heartbreak? Heartbreak has receipts. Heartbreak has a before and after. It changes your appetite and your sleep and your posture and your phone habits and your faith in your own judgment.
Heartbreak also has this weird side quest where your body becomes part of the storyline.
The accidental shrinking. The compliments you get that make your suffering feel like a reward. Then the regain, when your body stops panicking, when your nervous system tries to come home, when food becomes food again, when your like tries to restabilize.
And suddenly you're looking at yourself like: Wait...Am I allowed to change back?
It's wild how society loves "transformation" until it looks like softness. Until it looks like rest. Until it looks like a body that isn't performing pain in a way people can aestheticize.
So yeah...If growth is supposedto happen through discomfort,
I just want to file a complaint about the timeline.
I'm trying to be wise. I'm trying to be healed. I'm trying to be gracious. I'm trying to be the bigger person. I'm trying not to spiral, not to numb, not to go ghost, not to run back to what hurts just because it's familiar.
Sometimes I want to stomp my feet, cross my arms, and say NO! I don't want to learn the lesson. The lesson can go to hell and leave me alone.
And maybe that's the mild realization I'm sitting with right now:
Growth aint always brave. Sometimes it's petty. Sometimes it's reluctant. Sometimes it's you doing the right thing while rolling your eyes the entire time. Sometimes it's you choosing yourself and being annoyed that you have to.
But if "cooked" means I'm being shaped by everything I didn't ask for...then I guess I'm in the oven like everyone else.
I'm just asking God to lower the temperature a little.
baratheonpilled
blakekathryn
