I Still Feel Childlike Shame After Certain Conversations With My Mother

Dear Delyara, It doesn’t even take much anymore. Or perhaps it never did. One sentence in the wrong tone. One comparison. One gentle-looking criticism carrying old weight. One implication that I am tired because I am failing, not because life has asked a lot from me. And suddenly something in me goes younger. That is the humiliating part. Not that she says it. That my body still receives it with such old obedience. I can be a grown woman all day and still lose an evening to the emotional aftertaste of one conversation that touched an old bruise in exactly the way only a parent can. That power upsets me. Not because I don’t understand it. Because I do. And it still works.