I Have Friendships That Call Me for Comfort and Leave Me Still Carrying Myself Alone After We Hang Up

Dear Delyara, I know how to be a soft place. A wise place. A containing place. A place where other people can arrive half-broken and leave more assembled than they came. I am less sure how many of my friendships know how to do that back. Not because people are cruel. Because patterns become roles. And once a woman is known as the strong one, it can become difficult for even kind people to imagine the scale of her need unless she makes it almost impossible to miss. I don’t always have the strength for that. So the friendship remains warm, but lopsided. Close, but not fully mutual in the places that matter most. And after some calls, I can feel exactly that loneliness — not lack of contact, but lack of real emotional reciprocity. It hurts more than I used to admit.