I cut fruit for everyone else and forgot to eat any myself

Dear Delyara, I am a mother, and this evening I made one plate for the children, another small bowl for my husband, and left the kitchen without putting a single piece in my own mouth. I noticed later, when I felt shaky and slightly sick, that I had been feeding everybody else with the same care I would normally call love, while quietly removing myself from the picture again without ceremony. That’s what troubles me. Not that I forgot once. That it felt so normal. I do not neglect myself in dramatic ways. I neglect myself in efficient, invisible ways that fit inside family life so neatly they can almost pass as good character. I am the person who remembers, prepares, cuts, washes, checks, packs, and carries on. Then later I stand in the kitchen eating two biscuits too fast and wondering why I feel unsteady in body and mood. The answer is usually simpler than I want it to be. I have disappeared from my own care again.