I don’t feel like I belong in my own family the way I used to

Dear Delyara, This is a very difficult thing to admit. Nothing terrible has happened. No one has thrown me out. No one has said I don’t matter. And yet, lately, I have had this strange internal feeling of being emotionally slightly outside. Like I am central in function but not in spirit. Needed, yes. Useful, deeply. But belonging in that easy warm way? Less and less. Maybe it’s the children getting older. Maybe it’s the marriage changing shape. Maybe it’s me. Maybe it’s tiredness. Maybe it’s the fact that I have spent too many years being the organiser, the holder, the rememberer, and not enough years being the one who gets gathered in. I don’t know. I only know there are evenings when everyone I love is in the house and I still feel as if I am standing half a step outside the emotional centre of it. That feeling hurts in a way I can’t easily justify, which somehow makes it worse.