“asking for help without knowing how deep it would go”

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I’m not used to slowing down.

Listening to podcasts. Reading. Breathing on purpose.
Meditating. Journaling.

All of it feels new. Slightly unnatural.
Like trying on someone else’s habits.

Growing up, most things were functional.
We maximised productivity. Optimised time. Streamlined processes.

Even reading was functional.
You read for exams. You read the paper so you knew what was happening in the world.
My mum encouraged that, be informed, be aware. It was useful. 

So even now, reading still feels like a chore.
Admitting that I don’t enjoy reading out loud feels slightly embarrassing.
Like I’m missing a basic human setting.

Moving to the West exposed me to a wider spectrum of ways of being.
Suddenly, I wondered if I might be slightly ADHD, a neat explanation for why my brain refuses to sit still. A convenient excuse for being a “bad” reader.

There’s truth in it.

When I read, when I listen to podcasts, my mind wanders.
My eyes drift. My thoughts sprint ahead at a hundred miles an hour.
Nothing really lands.

I remember sitting there, phone in hand, doing absolutely nothing,
which already felt like failure.

My body had already cracked open once before.

But we were trying new things.
And podcasts were apparently one of them.

So I listened to one.
By a woman. About women. About choice.
One of the topics was whether to have children or not.

Forty minutes. Which is far too long for me.
I listened anyway, almost desperately, waiting for her to give me an answer I didn’t know how to find myself.

This wasn’t the first time the question had surfaced.
It had been circling me for years.

Ever since surviving, everything had felt borrowed, what it felt like to keep living afterward.

I remember, years earlier, watching an interview with Cameron Diaz.
She said she didn’t want kids.

This was the 90s.

My mind exploded.
That’s allowed? We’re allowed to have that option? We can just… say it?

I didn’t know if I was responding to her confidence or recognising something already living inside me.
I just remember how clearly that moment lodged itself in my body.

Years later, at uni, I was hanging out with my cousins’ friends, much younger than me.
The topic came up again. Children.

They asked if I wanted kids.
I said I’d adopt them so I wouldn’t have to love them too much.

They laughed. Hard.

I laughed too.
But I wasn’t fully joking. I meant: so I wouldn’t get too attached.

I finished the podcast.
Thirty years later, another woman said out loud that she didn’t want children.

She still didn’t give me an answer about whether I wanted them.
But at the end, she mentioned she was a life coach. And how to reach her.

So I did.

Growing up, I was never particularly proactive.
I waited for invitations. Which is probably why it sometimes feels like whatever I’ve built in my life just… fell into my lap.

I remember going to her website.
I didn’t really know what life coaches were, they sounded vaguely woo-woo, like people trying to sell insight back to me.

I didn’t research her.
Didn’t read reviews.
Didn’t overthink it.

This was my first time asking for help,
without knowing what would come next.
I just knew I needed it.

I didn’t know it yet, but this was the first real response to the moment everything cracked open.

I filled in the form.
I wrote:
I feel like an onion. I don’t know what’s in the core, and I want to find it. I want to understand it.

And then I waited.