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I’ve learned that a lot of people have things to say about your life.

I am only Briana—but I live many lives.

I’m a mom. A woman. A businesswoman. A chronically ill person. And still, somehow, just a girl in her twenties trying to feel alive.

There is duality in me, so there has to be duality in how I live.

People act far more entitled than they should. Just because life looks a certain way for you does not mean it looks that way for everyone else. And in this day and age—where everything is curated, cropped, and selectively shared—I don’t believe anyone gets to comment on someone else’s life with certainty.

I know, without question, that no one knows the full ins and outs of mine. The closest is Cara, and even she gets lost sometimes. That’s not a failure—that’s the reality of a life lived in layers.

Shaming and questioning the lives of others is something that should be left behind in 2026. Especially for me. Most of my interactions these days aren’t soul-based. There aren’t many real check-ins. Not many moments outside of bars or business. I don’t have many people in my life—and I prefer it that way.

Unnecessary commentary has never been something I need.

No one around me can truly relate to the life I live. No one has experienced the health issues I’ve carried and continue to manage. My mom friends all have co-parents. My friends in their twenties don’t carry responsibility in ways that demand this much of them. My situation isn’t unique to the world—but it is completely foreign where I live.

There is no guide.

No blueprint.

No one I can call and say, how did you survive this part?

So I survive it myself.

And with that being said—fuck what anyone has to say about the way I live my life. About the ways I choose to feel alive. Because God knows most men and women could not live a single day in my world, carry what I carry, and still exude what I do.

I am well-rounded. My priorities are straight. And just because you see one face of someone’s life does not mean you know their life.

On a larger, philosophical scale, this isn’t just about me—it’s about the moment we’re living in.

We exist in a society that mistakes visibility for access and proximity for permission. Where fragments of a life—photos, posts, appearances, outcomes—are mistaken for the whole. Where observation has been confused with intimacy, and opinion has been elevated to entitlement.

But a life is not a performance.

And a person is not public property.

We are living under a soft form of surveillance—social, cultural, constant. Not enforced by governments, but by one another. Everyone watches. Everyone interprets. Everyone feels licensed to conclude. The result is a world where people feel examined but rarely understood, evaluated but seldom cared for.

Context has collapsed.

Interior worlds are ignored. Survival is misread. Contradiction is pathologized. A person having joy alongside hardship is seen as suspicious. Privacy is framed as secrecy. Distance is interpreted as arrogance. And coherence—linear, palatable, easily explained—has become something society believes it is owed.

But coherence is not a moral obligation.

There is a particular discomfort reserved for lives that don’t follow approved timelines. Women who carry responsibility too early. Mothers who refuse martyrdom. People who live with illness and still choose pleasure. Individuals who refuse to collapse themselves into a single, digestible identity. When a life resists categorization, society doesn’t respond with curiosity—it responds with correction.

That impulse—to correct what we don’t understand—is not wisdom.

It’s a failure of imagination.

We have created a culture where everyone is seen and almost no one is known. Where commentary is endless, but care is rare. Where judgment fills the space empathy should occupy. Where people would rather have a take than hold complexity.

In that kind of world, choosing privacy is not secrecy.

Choosing nuance is not avoidance.

Choosing a small circle is not bitterness.

It is discernment.

Maybe the work ahead isn’t explaining ourselves better. Maybe it isn’t softening our edges to be more palatable, or narrating our pain so others feel comfortable consuming it. Maybe the work is restraint—learning to let lives exist without interrogation. Letting people be complex without demanding a storyline we can summarize.

Not every life is meant to be relatable.

Some are meant to be respected from a distance.

And if society hasn’t learned that yet, then opting out of its noise isn’t disengagement.

It’s intelligence.

It’s self-preservation.

It’s knowing that a life can be full, meaningful, and true—

even when no one else understands it.

Especially then.