Everything I carry.
Lately, my mind has been crowded with thoughts I can’t quite switch off. I keep circling around the same questions. am I good enough, am I where I’m meant to be, why does it feel like at any moment someone might discover I’m not who they think I am? Imposter syndrome has been knocking louder than usual. And even though part of me knows I am more than capable, that I’ve earned my place, that I do good work, I still find myself conflicted. It’s like I hold both truths at once, the deep, quiet confidence and the swirling doubt.
Sometimes, I feel like a parody of myself — going through the motions with a painted-on calm, while everything inside me spins.
“It’s like wearing a mask that starts to stick to your skin, and you begin to wonder if you’ll ever remember who you were before you put it on.”
If you’ve ever felt it, you’ll know what I mean. And the tricky part is, from the outside, everything probably looks fine. Because we get good at that, don’t we? At looking composed, at smiling, at carrying on. Sometimes I wonder if people would be shocked at how often I feel like I’m bluffing my way through the day.
People have described me as sensitive, even "highly strung." I used to flinch at that , like it was a character flaw I needed to work on. But I’ve come to realise it’s not something I can change. It’s in my wiring, part of my DNA. I feel things deeply, intensely. And while it can be exhausting, it also makes me who I am. The one who notices everything, overthinks everything, takes things to heart more than she probably should.
I wish I could say I remember everything too, but my memory is shocking these days, no thanks to menopause. Whole conversations vanish, names disappear mid-sentence, and I regularly walk into rooms with great purpose and absolutely no idea why. The funny thing is, I can still remember every word to songs from the 80s, like they’re etched in my brain forever, even if I can’t always remember what I just went upstairs to do.
At the same time, I’ve been watching someone else carry a very different kind of weight. My housemate Hoda is Iranian and one of the kindest, most thoughtful people I know. She’s been holding a quiet, aching worry that’s hard to witness. Her family and friends are in Iran, and with the escalating unrest and attacks, her heart is constantly pulled across oceans. Recently, some mornings, I’ve found myself watching her as she watches the news on her phone, sitting in silence, eyes glazed over with fear. Other days, she’s quiet but trying to pretend she’s okay. We’re both masters at pretending. Different reasons, same performance.
“It’s a reminder that everyone is carrying something.”
Some of us carry our fears openly, others wrap them tightly and tuck them away until we’re alone. And some of us — well, we carry them into the shower, into traffic, into supermarkets, into overly polite emails.
As a single person, there’s no backup system. I carry it all. I pay the mortgage, the electric, the water rates, the sewerage rate, and my body corporate fees. I do the home-making, the cooking, the cleaning. I look after Leonardo and Monty, my two beautiful cats who bring me so much comfort but also rely on me completely.
Hoda, my housemate, helps in her own way, it’s her official job to feed the cats, and she does it every single morning without fail. She’ll offer to vacuum or mop too, but whether it’s my very specific way of doing things (mild OCD) or her brilliant mind being focused elsewhere, I usually end up doing most of it myself. We joke that Leonardo is my cat and Monty is hers, which always makes me smile because I now live in a house full of Persians: both my cats are Persian breed, and Hoda is Iranian (Persian).
She’s an incredibly bright woman, fluent in four languages and currently completing her PhD in Law at Bond University, one of the top universities in Australia. She’s far more impressive than she realises, even if she can walk straight past a full rubbish bin without batting an eyelid.
“There’s no one to pick up the slack when I’m tired, no shared load, just me, trying to keep all the wheels turning.”
I’ve realised lately just how lonely the human experience can be. And that loneliness, for me, is layered. As I’ve shared before, my immediate family are all gone, my mother, my father, my sister, my brother. There are days when I feel untethered, like I’m floating without an anchor, pretending to be someone with structure when I sometimes feel like scaffolding held together with chewing gum.
“It can feel like I’m walking through life without a map. There’s no one ahead of me, no one beside me, and on the hardest days, it feels like there’s no one behind me either.”
And if I’m honest, I never really got over my sister’s death. To this day, I think about her every single day. Losing her still haunts me. Her death feels like an unfinished sentence — one I keep trying to complete in my mind. There’s a part of me that accepted the deaths of my father, my mother, and even my brother — not without sadness, but with a sense of understanding. But losing her? That still feels unfinished. I carry it like a stone in my pocket, always there, weighing down my steps, even when I manage to smile.
One of my most treasured memories is a holiday we took together to Lanzarote in May 2008. Just the two of us. We lay beside the pool, soaking up the sun, talking for hours. I remember ordering lunch with my very basic Spanish, feeling half-proud, half-ridiculous, and laughing with her about how often I got it wrong. It was simple and slow and exactly what we needed. That was the last proper time we had together before I moved to Australia later that year. I never imagined it would be the last holiday we’d share. Isn’t that always the way? You don’t know you’re in a "last time" until it’s already slipped through your fingers.
I isolate, not because I don’t like people but because isolation offers a kind of control. In a world where so much feels uncertain or out of reach, choosing solitude feels like reclaiming a little piece of power. It’s not good for me, I know that. Humans are wired for connection, but connection also means vulnerability. It means letting people see the cracks, the gaps, the days when you cry over nothing and eat cereal for dinner.
Sometimes, when the anxiety ramps up, the isolation starts to feel like a safety net. But then the flip side creeps in — the silence can get loud. The very thing I use to protect myself ends up amplifying the imposter syndrome, the loneliness, the grief.
“The silence can get loud.”
And yet, I know I’m not alone in feeling this way. I’ve had conversations with friends, colleagues, even strangers, who are navigating similar emotional terrain but just better at hiding it under nice clothes and productivity apps.
Watching my housemate live in two worlds at once, the present here in Australia and the turmoil in her homeland — has deepened my empathy. It’s shown me how little we often know about what someone is carrying. The other night, we sat on the couch together. Neither of us said much. We just watched Netflix and shared slices of rainbow bread filled with cream from the Japanese bakery down the road, our new ritual. Not popcorn and films, but comfort all the same. A little sugar and colour in a world that sometimes feels grey.
“That bread has become our little treat, something to look forward to.”
I’m obsessed with Japan — the culture, the calmness, the kindness. But it’s more than that. What draws me back again and again is the natural beauty of the place and the people themselves, so polite, so gracious, so quietly dignified. It’s also practical in ways that surprise people; it’s actually cheaper for me to visit Japan than it is to make the long trip back to where I’m from. And if I’m being really honest, I don’t have anything to go home for anymore. Japan has become a kind of chosen sanctuary, a place where I can breathe, where I feel safe as a solo traveller, where no one asks too many questions.
“A reminder that joy still exists. That there’s still beauty out there waiting to be experienced.”
Maybe that’s the point. Maybe we don’t need to fix each other. Maybe we just need to be present, to listen without offering solutions, to see each other, even in our most unguarded moments.
So if you’re feeling like you’re not enough right now, or like you’re the only one barely holding it together, I want to gently say this: you’re not alone. And you’re not broken. This world is heavy. And it’s okay to feel tired. It’s okay to need rest. It’s okay to feel afraid.
We’re all carrying something. The trick, I think, is to remember we don’t have to carry it alone. Sometimes, it just takes one honest conversation, one shared silence, one hand reaching out.
And sometimes, writing it down is the first step back to yourself.
For me, writing has become a lifeline, a quiet space where I can lay everything out and make sense of the chaos. There’s a freedom in it, a clarity. I’ve always found it easier to put my thoughts on the page than to say them out loud. It’s where I find my truth, where I stop performing and just be. I don’t always know what I think or feel until I see it written in front of me.
