I looked at the fruit bowl and realised I’d stopped buying things I like

Dear Delyara, Apples for the children. Bananas for lunchboxes. Grapes if they’re on offer. Maybe oranges if the week is going well enough. I stood there and suddenly realised there was nothing in the bowl that belonged to my own preference. Everything in it had been chosen around other people’s hunger, other people’s tastes, other people’s routines. That is such a small thing. It still made me feel seen by my own sadness in a way I wasn’t expecting. Because it isn’t about fruit. It’s about how often my own desires are the easiest thing to trim out of family life without anyone noticing, including me.