I Answered a Text With a Heart Because I Had No Words Left

Dear Delyara, It was a kind text. A real one. From a friend who deserved more than a little red heart reaction. But by the time I read it, I had no language left in me that didn’t feel like work. So I sent the heart. That made me sad afterward. Not because the heart was false. Because it was smaller than what I felt. I was grateful. I was touched. I was softened by it. I was relieved to be thought of. And all of that got reduced to one tiny red symbol because I was too emotionally spent to shape real feeling into sentences. I think people misunderstand silence and brevity all the time. Sometimes it doesn’t mean absence. Sometimes it means there is too much feeling and not enough energy to carry it properly into words. That was me tonight.