We were on vacation. Rented Airbnb, the whole thing. Our daughters — three or four years old — were building a gingerbread house together. It was supposed to be a moment.

Then they started bickering. Over nothing. The way only small children can manufacture a crisis out of zero raw material. It escalated. Tears. Screaming. Full collapse.

I looked at my friend. And I said it — not dramatically, not as a joke. Just honestly:

We both laughed. Because it was true. Because nobody had prepared us for the specific absurdity of that moment — the vacation, the gingerbread house, the meltdown, the feeling of being a fully grown adult completely undone by a four-year-old's argument over frosting.

After that I started saying it all the time. Kids getting older. Work getting harder. Relationships getting complicated. Aging parents. Big decisions with no clear answer.

I am not equipped became the most honest thing I knew how to say.

And when I said it, people didn't judge me. They nodded. They exhaled. They said me too.

So here's a place to say it.