I’m Performing a Life I Don’t Remember Choosing

Somewhere along the way, I started playing a role and forgot when auditions ended. The lines come easily now. I know what to say, how to say it, when to smile, when to nod. From the outside, it probably looks like confidence. From the inside, it feels like muscle memory doing all the work.

I don’t remember choosing this life so much as agreeing to it in pieces. A yes here. A compromise there. Nothing dramatic enough to register as a turning point. Just a steady accumulation of decisions that felt reasonable at the time and irreversible in hindsight.

People compliment me on how put together things seem. I thank them. That’s part of the role. What I don’t say is how much of that polish is habit, not intention. I’ve learned how to function without checking in. How to move through days on autopilot and call it stability.

There’s comfort in predictability. There’s also a quiet suffocation that comes with it. When everything is scripted, there’s no room to ask whether the script still fits. You just keep hitting your marks and hope the feeling catches up eventually.

I catch myself monitoring how I’m perceived more than how I actually feel. Is this impressive enough? Does this look like progress? Would this make sense to someone watching from the outside? It’s exhausting, carrying an invisible audience everywhere you go.

The strangest part is how normalized this performance has become. We reward it. Applaud it. Build entire systems around it. The more convincingly you play the role, the less anyone questions whether it’s costing you something.

Sometimes I try to remember who I was before all of this—before the expectations calcified, before the narrative solidified. That version feels blurry now. Not gone, exactly. Just quiet. Like they learned early on that spontaneity wasn’t efficient and curiosity didn’t pay well.

There are moments when the performance slips. Late at night. In small, unguarded pauses. That’s when the questions show up.

If no one were watching, what would you do differently?

What parts of this are actually yours?

When did you stop being curious about your own life?

I don’t love those moments. They feel destabilizing. They threaten the structure I’ve worked hard to maintain. So I smooth things over. Recommit to the routine. Double down on the role because at least it’s familiar.

But familiarity isn’t the same as fulfillment. I know that. I’ve always known that. I just hoped the feeling would eventually change if I stayed consistent long enough.

There’s a grief in realizing you’re good at something you don’t love. A special kind of sadness in being praised for a life that feels misaligned. It’s hard to complain when things are “working.” Hard to justify wanting something else when this version of you is functioning just fine.

The fear isn’t that I’ll fail. It’s that I’ll succeed at the wrong thing and lock myself into it permanently. That I’ll wake up one day with a well-rehearsed life and no idea how to step out of character.

I don’t think the answer is burning everything down. That’s another fantasy—dramatic, unrealistic, and suspiciously convenient. I think the real work is quieter. More uncomfortable. It involves noticing when I’m performing and asking why. It involves letting the role loosen without immediately replacing it with another.

I’m not ready to stop performing entirely. Maybe no one ever is. But I’m starting to question who the performance is for—and what it’s costing me to keep it up.

If this is my life, I want to remember choosing it.

Not just playing it well.