Identity in a Pressure Cooker

Being a South Asian wife comes with an unspoken job description:

hold everything together.

Funny thing — I couldn’t even hold myself together.

I shifted personalities like outfits:

desi-wife version, western fashionista version, hidden-gifted-girl version, burned-out-student version.

I was all of them and none of them.

Marriage didn’t simplify my identity.

It multiplied it.

But he kept saying,

“You don’t have to pick just one.”

And that…worked.