I laugh through tears that I furiously wipe away. Crying isn’t weak. I know this. Rationally. But I also know the world doesn’t reward tears or see emotionality as strength. I’m an empowered, no-nonsense woman who feels all her feelings and battles the cultural pressure to contain them, to have my emotional shit in order. Even when all I want to do sometimes is indulge in a teary explosion of hugging my condiment-named cats while cry-singing along to my nineties emo playlist.

“This idea that you’re all on your own, that your financial success or failure equates to your success or failure as a man. It’s seriously damaging, and it’s the lie that an oppressive capitalist patriarchal society wants us to live enslaved to.”

Because you can’t pick which emotions you feel—you’re in touch with them and you experience them or you’re not and you don’t.

I’m so scared, as I teeter on the edge of free-falling. Because that’s what trust is—a free fall of belief that your faith is not misplaced, that the rope you’re relying on will catch you, and the precipitous drop won’t crush you but instead end in a rush of relief, a stronger capacity to be brave and fearless.