Necessary Delusions

A Girl, Finally entry

There’s a fine line between hope and delusion, and most of us are walking it in good lighting with a calm face and to-do lists.
We get ghosted and say it “signs”.
We lose jobs and call it redirection.
We whisper “everything is unfolding” while our lives feel paused.
And somehow, saying it out loud keeps us from falling apart.
Call it optimism. Call it coping. Call it curated peace; we move.

Delusion gets a bad rep, but I think it deserves more credit.

Not the kind that makes you ignore red flags or rerun old patterns.
I’m talking about the quiet kind.
The kind that lets you wake up without a reason and still try again.
The kind that lets you romanticize your walk to the mailbox like it’s a slow scene in a movie about a woman finding her way.
The kind that turns a Tuesday into a love letter, just because you lit the right candle and added oat milk to your coffee like it mattered.

We don’t always know how things will come together, but we still speak like they will.
And that’s not ignorance.
That’s practice.
Hope is muscle memory. Faith is a tone of voice.
Sometimes it’s also a playlist, a good mirror and a very specific grocery store aisle where your dream life suddenly feels possible.

We keep showing up with a soft heart even when the world makes that feel unsafe.
We build routines around our dreams.
We name the chaos a “plot twist” just to keep the narrative alive.
We don’t lie to ourselves, but we do tell the truth we want to live in and then do our best to walk it out without tripping.

And sometimes, that’s enough.
Sometimes the delusion is what gets us dressed.
Sometimes it’s what keeps us from texting someone who already showed us who they are. (Twice.)
Sometimes it’s what helps us try again without the applause.
And yes, sometimes it’s why we open the Notes app at 2AM and convince ourselves it’s a breakthrough.

Delusion isn’t about pretending everything is perfect.
It’s about believing that things can still be good even when they’re unfinished.
That you can be uncertain and still be aligned.
That you don’t need proof to keep going. You just need a reason.
And maybe a little therapy sesh with your emotional support person (or your actual therapist).

This isn’t chaos. It’s continuity.
It’s how we keep ourselves grounded.
How we stay tender in a world that wants us mechanical.
How we remember that we’re more than what we’ve survived.
More than what we’ve posted.
More than what we had to prove.

So yeah. We’re all a little delusional.
We call in joy with nothing but breath.
We speak of love like it’s still circling the block.
We hold space for better even when we have no evidence it’s coming.

If delusion is faith with better outfits,
what’s yours look like right now?