No Cracks, No Breaks

My grandmother called me yesterday. She operates on her own schedule, always has, so the call itself wasn't unusual.

She wanted to hear my voice and make sure I was okay. She wanted to tell me how strong I am, how proud she is, for doing something for myself after a year that nearly broke me. Her voice hasn't changed since I was small enough to sit on her lap, and hearing it say those words did something to my chest I still can't quite name.

Something between gratitude and a very specific kind of tired. And yes, I'm tired a lot, and for different reasons depending on the day.

But I want to be clear about something, because I think it gets lost in translation when I try to say this out loud to people who love me. I'm not ungrateful for the support. I'm not ungrateful for her call, or for anyone who occasionally checks in. I know the words come from care.

But there's a particular weight to being told you're strong. It's not the same as being told you're loved, or missed, or allowed to be a mess for one single afternoon without anyone needing you to be fine by dinner.

Somewhere between the fortieth and the 457th "you've got this," I started to understand what the compliment was actually asking of me. Not comfort. A performance. Keep standing. Keep being the one who doesn't need to be carried, so the rest of us don't have to figure out how to carry you.

That woman exists, the one everyone's proud of. I've been her, some days, blissful and free in the California sunshine, answering "I'm doing good" before the question's even fully out of someone's mouth. But she's not the only version of me currently living in this new zip code.

There's another one underneath her, doing the actual lifting. The one who packed the suitcases, signed the lease, learned the bus routes, figured out where the good produce is, all without asking anyone to help her carry a single bag of it.

Nobody offers to carry things for the strong one. Why would they? She's got it.

I left Virginia because I ran out of the particular kind of strength it takes to stay somewhere that was quietly costing me pieces of myself. That's not the same as being strong now. That's a person who had exactly one move left and made it. But try explaining that distinction to someone who's already decided you're a phoenix. They don't want the arithmetic. They want the metaphor.

Very on brand for me, honestly. I've spent most of my life being the reliable one, the one who doesn't crack, the one other people lean on precisely because I've made it look effortless. I make hard decisions the way I choose which line to stand in at the grocery store, too much math, too late to switch, might as well commit, and then I carry the bags myself, all of them, in one trip, because somehow, a long time ago, I got it stuck in my head that needing help was a kind of failure.

Or that I couldn't trust anyone to truly help, not without some sort of catch.

This song about a magical family, of all things, gets closer to this feeling than almost anything I've read written for adults. It's sung by the sister who can move mountains, literally, and who is so tired of being loved only for what she can lift. She never gets asked how she's doing. She gets asked what she can carry next.

I think that's what admiration does to grief, if you're not careful. It hands you a role instead of a hand to hold. Be the strong one. Be the inspiration. Be fine, so everyone else gets to feel better about the fact that they can't fix this for you.

And I've had practice. Years of it, being fine so other people don't have to sit with the version of me that isn't.

So this is me, and I'm tired in a way that doesn't photograph well. I'm somewhere in the middle distance between the granddaughter my grandmother is so proud of and the woman who still doesn't know how to ask for help without apologizing for needing it in the first place.

Both women are me. Both are allowed to exist here, in this chapter, in this life I'm building out of borrowed courage, sore shoulders, and a song written for a cartoon strongwoman who deserved a nap.

Strong or spent, capable or cracking, sometimes both, in the very same breath. But sure, keep telling me how strong I am. It's easier than asking what it's actually costing me to keep proving it.

Just don't ask me to carry anything else this week.

Maybe next week.