The Costume I Forgot I Was Wearing

If anything happens, all my sisters usually call me first. Not because I am the firstborn or because I have the solution more than the rest. But because I am always less worried or panicking when there is any problem, and I think this is what most people always remember. That person who does not panic like the rest.

I did not just become that person at once it was a gradual process for me, just like the way some of these permanent things always happen without a special decision. One phone call from Aunty A, another call from Uncle B.

And I don't always run away from any because I handle it all to the best of my ability, and before I finish handling one sometimes, another one has come. And it got to a particular point where it stopped being something I did, and it became something I was.

At some point, because I have been asking myself some questions recently, but this question came quite a while ago. I had to ask myself if what I am doing is just familiar enough to feel like identity or if I was just occupying a role that was actually feeding me. Because looking at the two, the difference is not easy to separate.

When it comes to familiarity, I will say that it has a warmth that easily passes for purpose. Because I will always continue to show up, and it might be be filling something, but because stopping it would require me to answer what I am when I am not useful to everyone around me.

For a long period of time, this question was what I was trying to find a solution to when I was faced with some challenges some time back, and no one managed to call me, maybe because I did not spill it out. Maybe. Not because they did not care. But the way some people have seen me is that I do not need what I kept giving. I feel this has occupied or taught everyone that.

And because of that, I feel the minds of most people around me have now been configured in one direction. And this costume had been on so long that I mistook it entirely for tough skin.

Thank you for reading.

_{Images are mine}