u/True-Construction346

Had therapy yesterday and I went in like usual, thinking we’d just talk about overthinking again. I didn’t think anything new would come out of it because I feel like I already know I overthink everything.

But I was describing how I’ll spend hours rereading a text before replying, or how I still replay random conversations from years ago like I’m trying to extract some hidden meaning.

She just looked at me for a second and said, very calmly, “You’re running a full diagnostic on a paper cut while ignoring the broken leg.”

I actually stopped talking after that. Like my brain just paused mid-process.

And then of course, immediately after that moment, I started thinking about this ridiculous shirt my roommate has that says something like “my anxiety has anxiety.” I remember laughing at it before, but now it felt a bit too accurate in a way that’s not even funny.

Because it is that loop sometimes. Not just being anxious, but being aware of being anxious, and then reacting to that awareness, and then somehow that becomes another thing to manage. It just keeps stacking.

My therapist asked why I was laughing and I tried to explain the shirt thing and she actually wrote it down. Said it was one of the more honest descriptions I’ve given.

Which is kind of funny because I didn’t mean it as anything deep, it just felt obvious.

But I’ve been thinking about both things since then. Her sentence and that stupid shirt. It’s like they’re pointing at the same thing but from opposite directions.

I don’t know, I’m still sitting with it. I’m supposed to “just exist” a bit more without analyzing everything I do, which sounds simple when she says it and not simple at all when I’m actually in it.

We’ll see how that goes.

First of every month, rent day. Not that I don't want to pay. It's just that after I pay, there's an empty feeling. Rent goes up every year. Not the same amount, but it always goes up. My salary goes up too, but never as fast.

I've thought about buying. Did the math. A down payment would take me years. While I save, rent keeps climbing. By the time I have enough, the down payment number might have moved. It's not that I'm not trying. It's just that the treadmill keeps speeding up.

My landlord uses my rent to pay his mortgage. His is an asset. Mine is an expense. I get that renting gives me flexibility. But flexibility doesn't pay for retirement. What happens when I'm old? No one gives you a house because you were a reliable tenant.

Every time I pay rent, I wonder who designed this. I work. I pay. I own nothing. But I also can't opt out. Don't rent, I'm on the street. Rent, and this is just my life.

I was watching an old show the other day and there was a scene where someone just casually said a phone number from memory, super fast, no hesitation. Not even their own number. Someone else’s.

And it made me stop for a second because I genuinely had to think about whether I even know my own phone number right now.

I do, technically. But only because I type it into things enough times. It doesn’t feel memorized in the way older generations seem to have actually memorized things.

My grandma used to keep this tiny notebook next to the house phone with names and numbers written in really small handwriting. I remember flipping through it as a kid and thinking it looked weirdly official, like a mini database. But my parents always say they didn’t even need that half the time. They just knew numbers. Friends, family, work, random places they called often.

And honestly that feels kind of impossible to me.

Now if my phone died unexpectedly, I think I could maybe contact... two people? Maybe.

It’s funny how fast certain skills disappear once technology quietly takes over for you. Not in a dramatic way. Just little things. Directions. Birthdays. Phone numbers. Stuff people probably repeated enough times that it became automatic.

My grandma has this phrase she repeats all the time: “whatever you hate the most is what you’ll end up doing anyway.”

Like if I said I hated eating pork as a kid, she’d immediately go, “just wait, you’ll marry someone who loves pork and wants it every day.” It used to annoy me so much because it felt like such a strange worldview. Like what does that even mean. Am I not allowed to dislike anything? Is life just some weird punishment system?

She said it again today and for some reason I finally asked her where that came from.

She just shrugged and said, “life experience.”

And honestly that answer made more sense than I expected.

My grandma got married really young, to someone her family chose. Had kids young too. Most of her adult life was basically built around other people’s decisions, other people’s needs, other people’s routines. Not in some dramatic way, just in that very ordinary way women from her generation often lived.

So of course that became her logic. Not “choose what you love,” but more like, don’t get too attached to preferences because life doesn’t really care.

I don’t even think she means it in a bitter way anymore. It just sounds practical to her.

It’s weird because I spent years thinking she was saying something super irrational, and now I kind of hear the whole sentence differently. It’s less superstition, more biography.

I added up what I spend on my car every month: the loan payment, insurance, gas, the random repairs that keep popping up. I realized I'm paying more for the privilege of driving than I am for my apartment.

And I can't get rid of it. My city was built around cars. Public transit is a joke. The grocery store is too far to walk. Every job basically requires reliable wheels.

So I'm trapped. The car is necessary but getting harder to afford. One unexpected repair can wreck my budget for months.

Cars used to mean freedom. The symbol of American independence. Now they're a financial trap baked into how our cities are built. You can't function without one, but you can barely afford to keep one.

And the whole "just take public transit" thing? That only works if you live somewhere with actual public transit. Most of us don't. So we're stuck paying for a system we built around cars and can't unbuild.

I told a family member that I couldn't talk a certain way or about certain things anymore. I was clear about it and didn't apologize for saying so.

She ended up getting very angry and said that I was becoming cold. She even said that everything was fine and that she was not sure who I was.

I gave reasons but she did not accept them. I stuck to my decision.

Afterwards, I argued with myself for two weeks. Was I really so cold? Was I hurting her? Did I respond too strongly? Should a more considerate person have handled it differently?

She finally gave up trying to convince me. We got used to the new with the arrangement.

I am still unsure whether I did the right thing. But I know that I changed something. The old method was draining me. However, the calmness and understanding that I had anticipated? I didn't get that.

Instead, I was faced with a decision that I was comfortable with and two weeks of uncertainty.

Perhaps it's what it's meant to be like. Although no one told me that it would be so confusing.

Monday morning back at work, someone asks how my weekend was. I could tell them the truth, that I didn't do anything, stayed home scrolling my phone, and felt kind of empty the whole time. Instead I say, "Good, relaxing. You?" They say "Same," and we both move on.

Because "how was your weekend" isn't a real question, it's a greeting, like "how are you." Nobody wants the actual answer.

I tried being honest once. When I said my weekend was kind of lonely actually, their face did this awkward smile thing, and they said, "Oh, well, hope this week's better," then walked away faster than usual.

So now I just say it was good, even when it wasn't, even when I did nothing and felt bad about doing nothing. I think everyone's doing this. We're all asking each other how our weekends were without actually caring about the answer. It's just the thing you say on Monday.

But it makes me feel more alone, because I could use someone to talk to about the fact that my weekends are empty and I don't know how to fill them. But the one time someone asks, I know they're not really asking.

My weekend was fine, yours? Oh that's nice. Back to work. Every week, same script.

I started just saying "good" before they even finish the question, which cuts out the middle part where we pretend to care. Someone noticed and said, "You always say good. You never say what you actually did."

I didn't know what to say to that, because what I actually did was nothing, and saying nothing out loud feels worse than just saying good. So I made something up. "Oh you know, errands, caught up on some shows." They seemed satisfied with that.

Now I've added lying to the routine. How was your weekend? Good, did some errands. Every Monday, forever.