I feel flattened

Dear Delyara, As if everything in me that used to rise more easily — humour, curiosity, sensuality, patience, spark, appetite for life — has been pressed down by repetition, pressure, and overuse until what remains is the practical outline of a person doing what must be done. I still function. That is part of the problem. Flattening can look like adulthood from outside. Inside, it feels like being less alive than I know I once was. And I don’t know how much longer I can keep calling that “just a busy season” without feeling like I’m helping the damage hide.