I delayed going upstairs

Dear Delyara, Tonight I stayed downstairs longer than I needed to. Nothing important was happening. The lights were low, the kitchen was tidy enough, the phone had gone quiet, and still I kept finding tiny reasons not to go upstairs. Refill the water. Wipe the counter. Check the window. Fold one more thing. I think I was delaying being fully alone with the day. Some evenings don’t feel sharp enough to call bad, but they still feel difficult to enter honestly. They ask you to sit with the emotional leftovers you managed to outrun while things were busy. Eventually I went up. But by then I understood the truth: I wasn’t avoiding sleep. I was avoiding the silence before it.