Every Woman Should Be 30% More Delusional

My hair was freshly blown out, skin perfumed, makeup fresh. I was basking in my favorite feeling: that post-getting-ready state. Clean. Soft. Feminine. Slightly delusional.

I reach for my phone to add something to my Amazon cart.

I open the browser.

A headline about a man whose hand had been pulled into a piece of industrial machinery.

One of those strange, gruesome stories that seem to appear out of nowhere. Tiny reminders that the internet is always waiting to drag you out of your own little world.

I closed the tab and sat there for a second.

And I thought about something I've been sitting with for a while now.

I believe every woman should aim to be, maybe, 30% more delusional than she thinks she's allowed to be.

Not untethered from reality. Not irresponsible or avoidant. Just enough delusional to keep one foot planted in the life she's actually living while letting the other foot drift, just slightly.

She fills out the spreadsheet, but she also thinks about the way her new lover touches her.

She does the dishes, but she also remembers how delicious that vacation felt in her body.

She drops the kids off at school, but she also notices the handsome man helping someone change a tire.

She can do both. She was always doing both. She just hasn't given herself permission to call it intentional.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand: the rom-coms, the online shopping spirals, the hours spent in the fantasy of a different life aren’t guilty pleasures or wastes of time. They are proof that we are already fluent in this language of delusion. We just haven’t recognized it as a skill worth sharpening. And not only are these things acceptable, they are necessary, not as a coping mechanism to escape our lives, but because a woman connected to her inner world is more alive, more creative, more herself than one who has been completely flattened by the evidence around her.

This is what I've come to understand as one of the most direct routes back to our own femininity.

Dreams make us feel. They keep us tethered to the possibility, even a small, barely visible possibility, that something better is available to us. And something in me wants to hold onto that now more than ever.

The difference between being slightly delusional and being in denial is this: you are fully aware of the shitty realities. You see them. But you just choose to float above them, just one inch above. Not so high that you lose sight of the ground. Just high enough that the ground doesn't get to decide your ceiling.

I am not talking about ignoring your life. I am talking about refusing to let your current circumstances be the ceiling of your imagination.

And for the record, I am a realistic woman. I am one of those people who genuinely feels satisfaction from paying a bill on time, from doing things the right way, from being responsible.

But I've noticed that whenever I get too deep into that practical side of myself, I lose something. My softness.
My emotional world.
My sensuality, my senses, the pleasure of just feeling something.

I can spot the same thing in other women when I walk outside or watch videos online: the permanent crease between the eyebrows, the tension in the shoulders that has crept up to the ears, the condescending edge that's settled into the voice. I notice it because I am often that woman too.

And I wonder, when was the last time she let herself float?

You are allowed to want what you want. You are allowed to float. You are allowed to bask in a fantasy that makes the world feel more livable, even if just for a minute, and to do it without apologizing for it, without calling it escapism, without shrinking it into something small.

You are allowed to be 30% more delusional.

Because there will always be something waiting to pull you back down.

It could be a headline, a bill, a news story, or any other reminder of all the reasons you should stay practical, reasonable, realistic. But I believe a woman needs a small part of herself that refuses to be governed entirely by the evidence in front of her.

A small part that continues to dream anyway.

I am beginning to suspect that’s not delusion at all.

It’s hope.