By bedtime I felt like the hallway of everyone else’s day

Dear Delyara, Things had passed through me all day. School questions, work demands, domestic decisions, forgotten items, reminders, one child’s tears, my husband’s practical concerns, a friend’s message, the noise of the world, the needs of the house, tomorrow’s preparation. I carried all of it in the way hallways carry footsteps — necessary, useful, unnoticed except when blocked. By the time I got into bed, I did not feel dramatic or broken. I felt like a passageway. That’s such a strange form of exhaustion. To have spent the whole day functioning, helping, responding, and still arrive at night feeling less like a person and more like a route everything used to get somewhere else.