Enough As Is: Escaping the Ghosts of “Should”

The Voice That Wasn't Mine The first ghost didn't come at midnight. It came in daylight — in the bathroom mirror, while the steam was still thick enough to blur the truth. "You should be further along." The words didn't echo. They settled — heavy and invisible — somewhere behind my ribs. I hadn't thought them, but they pulsed through my body like static. That's how it starts: not with fear, but with familiarity. A whisper that sounds like ambition. We grow up believing those whispers are our own voices. You should work harder. You should be calmer. You should have figured it out by now. We call it motivation. We call it drive. But really, it's possession — the quiet haunting of a self that was never ours to begin with. For years, I built my life around that voice. I chased every "should" until my body broke trying to catch up. I mistook exhaustion for purpose. Perfection for safety. Success for belonging. I became a ghost of myself — polished, productive, hollow. Then one morning, standing before the mirror again, I asked the question that changed everything: Whose voice is this? The silence that followed wasn't empty. It was full — of breath, of body, of life I had forgotten to live. This book is about that silence. It's about learning to hear yourself beneath the noise of "should." It's about what happens when the ghost finally stops speaking — and you start listening.