I still become careful too quickly around my mother

Dear Delyara, The tone changes a little, or I know from the first sentence that she’s in a certain mood, and suddenly I’m softer, smaller, faster to explain, quicker to remove sharp edges from whatever I was going to say. I don’t even think she fully knows the effect she still has. That’s what makes it so tiring. I am not reacting only to the present call. I am reacting to a whole history stored in muscle and voice and expectation. By the time the conversation ends, I often feel like I have been translating myself the entire time into a language the room can tolerate. And translation is expensive.