I rewrote the same text message three times before sending it and hated how careful I have become

Dear Delyara, It was not an important message. That’s what made it feel worse. Just a normal reply to a normal person. But I kept changing the wording, softening the tone, removing anything that might be misread, checking if I sounded too cold, too warm, too much, too distant, too available. By the third draft, I could feel how much effort I was spending trying to arrive inoffensively in another person’s phone. I used to think this was politeness. Now I think it’s tiredness mixed with old fear. Somewhere along the way, too many ordinary interactions began feeling like places where I might accidentally get something emotionally wrong if I didn’t tread very lightly. That is an exhausting way to be alive in language.