Virgo
I didn't want any flowers, I only wanted To lie with my hands turned upand be utterly empty.How free it is, you have no idea how free - The peacefulness is so big it dazes you,And it asks for nothing. ~ Tulips (1961)
Sylvia Plath, Plath: Poems
The expectations other people have for your time, your choices, your responses are not actually about you at all. They are small maintenance projects these people are running to keep their own lives feeling organized and predictable. You have been treating these expectations as if they were contracts you signed, but most of them were never even spoken aloud. When you stop meeting an expectation that was never yours to begin with, the person who held it will adjust faster than you think they will. The real work is distinguishing between the expectations that serve a genuine need and the ones that serve only someone else's comfort with how things have always been.