I still become explainable around my mother before I become myself

Dear Delyara, That’s the sequence. Explainable first. Safe first. Digestible first. Only then, sometimes, a little honesty. I notice it while it’s happening and dislike it, but the body gets there before choice. There are certain relationships where my first instinct is still management — of tone, of wording, of possible reaction. It’s as if old experience trained me to believe that my unfiltered self would be too much effort for the room. So I edit. And then later I feel tired and slightly unreal. I wish adulthood had erased that old choreography more than it has.