I can still feel myself becoming twelve around certain relatives

Dear Delyara, It’s in the body before it’s in the words. The quicker smile. The softer answer. The extra explaining. The sense that I need to stay reasonable in a room that doesn’t always offer reason back. I walk into those family situations as the woman I am now and somehow still leave feeling I have spent part of the visit using an older emotional passport. That’s what family history does. It doesn’t always need drama to reactivate itself. Sometimes it only needs familiar tone and familiar expectations. I come home exhausted by translation. That’s the part no one sees.