I Feel Like a Function

Dear Delyara, Some days that is the deepest truth in the house. Cook. Remember. Reply. Find. Soften. Prepare. Notice. Hold. Translate. Repeat. It is not that my family does not love me. It is that love can still live inside patterns that use a woman so consistently she begins to feel less like a person and more like a system everyone depends on. And because I perform that system well, the emotional cost becomes invisible. Only I can feel it building. That is what I am grieving: how easy it is to become essential and still not feel fully seen.