I Feel Guilty for Wanting to Be Left Alone

Dear Delyara, There are evenings when the deepest desire in me is not connection. It is absence. No questions. No conversation. No one needing anything. No emotional reading of the room. No role to play. Just aloneness. And the guilt comes instantly, as if loving people should cancel saturation, as if a good woman should remain infinitely absorbent no matter how much of herself has already been used that day. I know better in theory. My guilt is older than theory. It lands first. And some nights, I think the guilt is almost as exhausting as the need for solitude itself.