I feel guilty for how often I want to lock a door and belong to nobody for one evening

Dear Delyara, Not because I hate my family. Because I am tired in ways family life does not always know how to respect until a woman is already too far gone to ask gently anymore. There are evenings where I want complete inaccessibility. No “Mum.” No practical questions. No husband asking what I think about something. No emotional weather to interpret. No tiny reaching hands of everyday need. And then the guilt arrives immediately, as if the wish itself proves something ugly about me. How can I love them and need distance from them with such force in the same breath? I don’t know how to answer that except honestly: because love and depletion share the same body in motherhood more often than people are willing to say. The guilt is not the whole truth. It is simply the louder one.