I found the form under a cookbook

Dear Delyara, I had already checked the obvious places twice. By the time I found it under an old cookbook in the kitchen, I was too tired to even feel triumphant. I just stood there holding the paper and feeling the kind of exhausted relief that only arrives after a task has stolen far too much emotional energy relative to its actual importance. My daughter had been calm the whole time. “It’s okay, Mum,” she said again, and somehow that made me feel worse. I don’t want my children managing my strain. I want to be the one absorbing theirs. But some days the small cracks show. A missing form is enough to reveal them.