I answered a text eight hours too late

Dear Delyara, By the time I saw the message properly, I was already in the middle of work, one child’s school issue, the grocery shop, and the creeping sense that the evening was going to be too full before it had even started. The text sat there in my mind all day like one more thing I was failing to do at a socially acceptable pace. When I finally replied that evening, my friend was kind about it. Of course she was. Still, I carried the guilt of being a person whose attention gets so overused by practical life that even people she loves can end up waiting behind laundry, dinner, school forms, and the low battery on her own brain. That’s a hard thing to admit. It’s also true.