Do you need a break? From what?
Do You Need a Break? From What?
Life begins quietly
and before we can ask questions,
roles arrive
folded neatly,
handed gently,
as if they were gifts.
Love happens somewhere in between,
taught differently, felt differently
one learns to wait,
the other learns to move on,
both calling it understanding
because that’s what we were told to call it.
Suspense hides in everyday things
in unread messages,
in pauses that stretch too long,
in silence that means everything
and still pretends to mean nothing.
Some are taught to fill the gaps,
some are taught gaps are normal.
We grow up collecting expectations
like invisible luggage
carry this, adjust that,
be strong, be calm,
don’t react too much,
don’t feel too little.
Funny how balance is always
someone else’s responsibility.
Love, meanwhile,
tries its best.
It arrives late,
leaves early,
returns when it can,
hoping effort will be mistaken for enough.
Wisdom doesn’t come with age,
it comes with exhaustion
when smiling feels like work,
when explaining feels heavier than silence,
when being “understanding”
starts sounding like self-erasure.
So we joke.
We laugh at our plans,
call tiredness maturity,
call compromise love,
call survival a sense of humor.
Intelligent comedy characters,
playing our parts so well
we forget they were written for us.
And somewhere between
doing too much,
asking for too little,
being called strong,
and feeling invisible
a thought appears, almost shy:
Do I need a break?
From work? From people? From love?
Or from the quiet habit
of becoming who I’m expected to be?
Maybe the break isn’t escape.
Maybe it’s a pause
to sit with myself,
untie these roles gently,
and ask again, honestly,
Do I need a break?
From what?