These daily posts are part of an ongoing attempt to understand.
I didn’t trade autonomy. Instead, I held onto it quietly, in the background. I learned to make myself small. I never chose to give it up – but I wasn’t given the space to practise it growing up, and didn’t understand why.
A loss of direction felt almost inevitable. I carried expectations that didn’t belong to me, and without the support I needed, I continued to shrink myself. My life felt limited unless I was willing to live someone else’s version of it. But that was never how I would have chosen to live – it didn’t feel like my life.
Living with a disability no one knew about meant I was often judged or misunderstood. For decades, there was no diagnosis to explain those experiences. I didn’t understand why I struggled to co-ordinate, to multitask, or to motivate myself, or what that meant for my mental health. I was left with a constant absence of clarity, and a persistent question: why?
Over time, I learned to stay small, to remain in the background, and to observe. In many ways, that helped protect my mental health.
That was the beginning of my journey – a need to understand not only my life, but also the intent behind it. That has been more difficult. I’m still trying to make sense of it, and it remains one of the few areas where I don’t yet have answers, only what I was given.
For the first time in decades, I am no longer living a life shaped by others. Instead, I am beginning to define my own life, in a way I wasn't able to before. Writing has become part of how I shape a sense of autonomy.
