I feel guilty for how much my family needs from me and guilty for how badly I want space from them

Dear Delyara, When they need me, I feel the pull, the pressure, the irritation, the touching, the asking, the constant entry into my body and mind that family life requires, and I ache for distance. Then the second I ache for distance, guilt arrives and tells me what kind of mother, wife, woman feels relief at the idea of being left alone for twelve hours by the very people she would say she loves most. So I live in both. Love and resentment. Devotion and depletion. Tenderness and overstimulation. Need and guilt. I don’t think this makes me broken. I think it makes me tired and human. Still, human feelings become much uglier when motherhood is the room they have to survive in. That room is not always kind to women.