Is it just me or does life sometimes feel like a meticulously constructed diorama and you’re just a tiny plastic figure glued into place, and you’ve always been totally fine with your little plastic life and your little plastic family and your little plastic house, and it's not even like it's a *bad* diorama, it’s actually quite lovely and everything you ever thought you wanted, but then one day a giant hand just kinda… nudges you, and suddenly you’re looking out at the vast, blurry world beyond the edges of the box, and you realize you have NO IDEA who you are outside of the tableau? And now you can’t unsee it. That’s what’s happening I think. I’m 31, married going on nine years, two little kids, a boy and a girl, and I love them with this visceral, almost painful intensity that defines my entire existence, and I used to feel like that was enough, that *I* was enough as a mother and a wife, but then I started volunteering at the local library, just to get out of the house a couple mornings a week, just to feel like I had a purpose beyond endless laundry cycles and snack negotiations, and it’s been good, it’s been more than good actually, it’s been… stimulating, and I’ve been feeling like myself again, or at least a forgotten version of myself, the one who used to read actual books and have actual conversations that didn’t revolve around potty training or school schedules, and there’s this other volunteer, Sarah, and she’s just… different. She talks about philosophy and art and things I haven’t thought about in years, and she has this laugh that crinkles her eyes and a way of looking at you like she genuinely wants to hear what you have to say, and it’s not performative, it’s just… her. And lately, my thoughts are just consumed by her, this utterly bewildering, almost adolescent fixation, and it’s not even just admiration, it’s this deep, aching, almost romantic pull, and I keep replaying conversations and imagining what it would be like to just… be with her, to talk for hours without interruption, to just exist in her orbit, and it’s terrifying. Am I totally out of my mind? Is this some kind of delayed adolescent identity crisis, or perhaps a somatic expression of unfulfilled desire, or just boredom masquerading as something more profound? Because it FEELS profound, and I feel this intense, unfamiliar yearning, like a part of me has been dormant for too long and is suddenly screaming to wake up, and it’s disorienting and exhilarating and absolutely riddled with guilt, because I do love my husband, I really do, and our life is good, it’s comfortable and secure and exactly what we built together, but this… this is something else entirely, this is a disruption of my entire schema for who I thought I was and who I was supposed to be, and I just don’t understand it, and I don’t know what to do with it, and does anyone else ever just feel this fundamental disconnect between the life they have and the life their deepest self is screaming for, and is it always this utterly perplexing and terrifying?