I still become more careful than myself around my mother

Dear Delyara, I notice it afterward. The softened tone. The edited opinions. The quicker laugh. The way I monitor her reactions while speaking instead of simply speaking. It happens so automatically that in the moment it feels normal, then I get off the phone or leave the house and realize I was not fully myself for most of that interaction. I am not blaming only her. Family patterns are older and more complicated than blame allows. But I can still feel how much of my body remembers needing to be careful there, and how little of that care is useful to the woman I am now. It is exhausting to keep speaking partly as your adult self and partly as the version of you that first learned the room.