No. 3 FINE

How are you?

Fine.

We say it so fast it barely qualifies as a word. More like a reflex. A door closes before anyone can see what is actually inside the room.

Fine when the job is killing you. Fine when the relationship is unravelling. Fine when you haven't slept properly in weeks. Fine when you are holding everything together with both hands and a face that says no really, I'm good.

We are so practised at fine that we have forgotten what honest sounds like. We have confused coping with thriving. We have built entire lives on the assumption that if nobody can see the crack, the crack doesn't count.

The performance starts young. You learn early that certain feelings are welcome and others are not. Happiness, yes. Excitement, yes. Anger, sadness, fear, confusion, the raw, unfiltered mess of being alive and not knowing what you are doing? Keep that in the room. Close the door. Come out when you are fine.

And so you do. You get so good at it that eventually the performance becomes the thing. You stop checking what is behind the door. You stop asking yourself the question honestly because the honest answer might require something you are not sure you have the energy to give.

Here is what fine costs you. It costs you the thing you actually need, which is to be known. Not the curated version. Not the capable version. The real one. The one who is tired and unsure and doing their best and would give anything for someone to look at them and say you don't have to hold all of this alone.

Fine is a lock on a door nobody asked you to close.

You can put it down whenever you are ready.