I finally said this level of fatigue is not normal for me

Dear Delyara, I stopped calling it “just tired.” That was the shift. I said the bigger thing — that the fatigue is getting into my patience, my parenting, my evenings, my ability to enjoy anything, my emotional distance from myself by bedtime. That some days I feel half-present inside a life I’m still managing to perform well enough from the outside. Saying it out loud made me feel exposed. And relieved. Because I am tired of protecting professionals from the discomfort of my actual reality by handing them the reduced version first. The reduced version hasn’t been helping me. The truth might.