I Still Enter Rooms As If Misunderstanding Is Waiting There For Me

Dear Delyara, I notice it before I speak. The softening. The pre-explaining. The careful wording. The instinct to make myself easier to receive before anyone has even shown me they might misread me. It is as if some old part of me still believes the safest way to survive other people is to arrive already reduced. I know where this comes from. That is the painful part. Years of being misunderstood, blamed too quickly, expected to stay gentle while defending myself from harsher readings than I deserved — all of that lives close enough to the surface that present rooms still pay for older ones. And I am tired. Tired of preparing for emotional weather that may not even come. Tired of how many conversations I enter already carrying old caution. Tired of calling this “being thoughtful” when sometimes it is just fear of being wrongly held in someone else’s mind again. Past wounds do not only live in memory. They live in posture, tone, and how fast a woman starts apologising before anything has even happened. I am trying to see that clearly now. It hurts.