I can still feel myself becoming twelve around certain family members

Dear Delyara, It’s physical. Smaller voice. Faster smile. More explaining. Less certainty in my own opinions. The adult self does not disappear, but she stops leading. That is what old family roles do. They lie in wait beneath perfectly ordinary afternoons and then reappear in posture before you’ve even finished your tea. I don’t like how tired I feel afterward. Not because anyone has necessarily been awful. Because some part of me has had to live in translation again, and translation is expensive when it is your whole body doing it.