April found me still reminding myself to pause before I speak. My patience feels thinner these days.
But something else has shifted too.
My relationship with my mother is ongoing and complicated. Boundaries have helped. It’s getting easier to hold them—which, strangely, makes saying yes feel cleaner too.
I even set up a friendship blind date for her and a client, meeting them there to help it along. They both said they were lonely. They both said they wanted connection.
Neither followed up.
Instead, my mom booked a bus trip with the neighbor she insists she can’t stand.
I laughed when she told me—really laughed. Not because it was surprising, but because it wasn’t. She moves toward what’s familiar, even when it doesn’t suit her.
I know that pattern. I’ve lived inside a version of it.
She either copies my hairstyle and clothes or criticizes them. There’s rarely a middle ground. I’m less affected than I used to be—not because she’s changed, but because I’m starting to see her more clearly.
And myself, in relation to her.
I still look for openings with her.
I just don’t disappear to find them.
Seeing her widowed and increasingly alone has made me more honest about my own relationships—what I reach for, what I tolerate, what I call connection.
I used to feel grateful just to be invited into the room. Now I’m beginning to understand I belong there.
That shift hasn’t come easily. When you’ve been trained since childhood to put yourself last, it becomes reflex. For years, caring for Lily reinforced that. Her needs came first—she depended on us for everything, even something as simple as a glass of water. I learned to orient myself around someone else completely.
I still feel that pull.
It shows up quickly, quietly—before I’ve had time to question it.
But now, I notice it.
And noticing it is new.
Recently, I met up with friends for what I thought would be a small, close catch-up—the kind where conversations stretch a little, where people stay with each other.
They asked about my upcoming trip—which I’ve shared before—and I walked through it again. Dates, places, the same small details. I watched their faces, waiting for something to land, for recognition to flicker.
It didn’t.
I kept talking anyway.
At some point, I felt it—a slight tightening in my chest, like I was performing attentiveness rather than receiving it.
I wanted to ask about their lives. To settle into something more mutual, more real.
Then a chair scraped the floor behind me. Someone new arrived.
“Oh—I hope you don’t mind,” one of them said, already standing to hug her.
I hadn’t known she was coming.
She was kind. Easy to talk to. That wasn’t the problem.
The problem was the shift.
The conversation widened and thinned at the same time. Stories shortened. Nothing stayed in one place long enough to matter. I could feel myself adjusting—nodding, smiling, asking questions, making space.
Making space.
It was so familiar I almost missed it.
I reached for my glass, took a sip, set it down more carefully than I needed to. Stayed a little longer—long enough to be the version of myself they expected.
But the feeling didn’t move.
It stayed there, steady and quiet: you didn’t choose this.
Underneath it was something harder to ignore—that I hadn’t been asked, because I’m someone who doesn’t usually need to be.
They weren’t wrong.
That’s who I’ve been.
But it’s not who I am anymore.
So I left.
Not abruptly. Not dramatically. I gathered my things, said goodbye, stepped out into the air like I had somewhere else to be.
I didn’t.
I just wasn’t willing to stay.
Outside, it took a minute for my body to catch up with the decision. I stood there longer than necessary, keys in my hand, feeling both unsettled and strangely clear.
For the first time, I didn’t talk myself out of it. I didn’t reframe it into something smaller or more acceptable.
I let the feeling be accurate.
Since Lily died, my tolerance for disconnection has narrowed. Not out of hardness—but out of a kind of clarity I didn’t have before.
I don’t have much capacity for spaces where I disappear without noticing.
This isn’t about being unkind.
It’s about no longer overriding something essential.
I’m learning to recognize the moment it happens.
To pause inside it.
To decide, instead of default.
And sometimes, that decision is to leave.
Maybe this is what becoming looks like now—
not adding anything new,
but subtracting
the quiet, practiced ways
I’ve learned
to abandon myself.