You are allowed to let someone down

It is the fear of being a disappointment.

Not a failure. A disappointment.

It is the specific dread of someone you care about feeling let down by you.

It is why you say yes when your whole body means no. It is why you show up depleted, over and over, to things you could have skipped.

Somewhere you absorbed the idea that a good woman is one who never disappoints anyone. That her worth is measured by how reliably she meets every expectation aimed at her.

So you became the one who could be counted on. And slowly, the cost of that reliability became your own life.

Here is the truth that took me a long time to accept. You cannot be a fully alive person and also never disappoint anyone.

Those two things cannot coexist.

Every time you choose yourself, someone somewhere may be mildly let down. That is not a sign you have done something wrong, but a sign you have started to exist on your own terms.

The people who love you will survive your occasional no. The ones who cannot were never really loving you.

They were relying on you, which is a different thing.

So here is your permission, and I mean it plainly. You are allowed to be a disappointment sometimes.

You are allowed to be the one who did not come, did not host, did not make it perfect. The world does not end.

It simply makes a little more room for you in it.

Being someone who occasionally lets people down is not a character flaw. It is the ordinary condition of a woman who has a self, and honors it.

Today, notice the yes that leaves your mouth before you have even checked with yourself. That reflex yes is worth catching, just once, before it commits you to something.

To the girl who learned that being good meant being useful: I am sorry someone taught you that your welcome depended on what you did for them. It was never true. You were allowed to simply take up your place at the table.

See you tomorrow.