I Re-read the Same Work Email Four Times Because My Brain Was Tired, Not Because the Email Was Hard

Dear Delyara, There was nothing especially complicated in it. A request, a date, a small instruction, a normal piece of ordinary working life. And yet I found myself reading the same paragraph again and again because the words would not settle properly into my mind. That scared me more than it should have. Because I know this feeling now. Not stupidity. Saturation. The kind that comes after too many tabs open in the brain for too many days in a row. Work, money, parenting, household management, private worries, public responsibilities, all of it competing for the same tired mental shelf space. I replied in the end. The task got done. Still, I sat there afterwards with that quiet fear women often carry privately: how much of myself is being used up in ways no one can see because I am still functioning enough to hide it? That fear is becoming more familiar than I’d like.