By bedtime I felt like I had been spoken through more than spoken to

Dear Delyara, All day there had been words, of course. Work words, school words, practical words, family words, kind words, ordinary words. But so much of it had passed through me as function rather than landed in me as connection. Answer this. Sort that. Remember this. React to that. Smile there. Manage this tone. By bedtime, I wasn’t in silence. I was in depletion from language. I lay there thinking how many forms of loneliness are not about being alone at all. Sometimes they are about being too available to meaning and too underfed by it at the same time.