I feel guilty for wanting less

Dear Delyara, Less noise. Less demand. Less sharedness. Less emotional labour. Less one-more-thing. Less being the default soft place for everybody else. That wanting rises in me by evening and guilt arrives right behind it, as if love should make me infinitely available, infinitely absorbent, infinitely okay with all the ways family life enters the body of one tired woman. I know that’s unfair. The guilt still lands. And because it lands, I don’t always even tell the truth about what I need. That is part of the damage too.