Focusing on what we do not want is an avoidance tactic. It is comfortable because it does not require much of us. We do not have to imagine anything new or stretch ourselves. We simply point to what exists (or what we fear might happen) and reject it.

I have always been described as an extrovert. I get involved in conversations, laugh, and tell stories, but what the outside world doesn't see is my internal narrative. This battle goes on when I am going to meet people I don't fully know, join a networking group, or go into a place I haven't been before.

We live in a world that has blurred the lines between presence and performance. A world that rewards the appearance of things over the felt experience of them. And nowhere does that show up more than in the lives we quietly compare ourselves to through the social scroll.

It's a strange thing to step back into your life and feel slightly like a guest in it. Nothing's wrong on the surface. But there's an internal mismatch. A quiet discomfort that's hard to name. It's a familiar pair of shoes. Same shoes, same colour, same size. But feels like I'm wearing the left shoe on the right foot, and the right shoe on the left.

The lunch tin isn't just a container of food. It's a mirror. Of our intentions. Our pressures. Our need to nourish, yes, but also to prove that we have 'done it', that we are good, that we are enough.

I know what it’s like to hold everything so tightly that you start to lose your shape. To smile and say, “I’ve got it,” when really bits of you are leaking out quietly in the form of snappy words, heavy sighs, evil glances at your partner, or that ever-growing feeling of resentment of life you don’t want to admit.