I said I needed the answer in writing

Dear Delyara, No apology. No extra softness. No “sorry, just to be sure…” I just said it. That felt so much cleaner than the old version of me who would have smiled, worked around the ambiguity, and then privately carried all the stress of trying to do something properly from a half-spoken conversation. I don’t want to live like that professionally anymore. I want clarity without self-erasure. This week I got a little closer to that.