I still feel guilty when I need less from life

Dear Delyara, Less noise. Less socialising. Less emotional demand. Less movement. Less contact. Less output. Less proving. There are weeks where that is genuinely what my body is asking for and still I hear that cruel voice immediately: you’re shrinking, you’re becoming difficult, you should be able to handle more by now. I’m tired of that voice. Because some days I do not need discipline. I need reduction. And the only reason that becomes a moral issue at all is because I have learned to treat my own limits as suspicious more quickly than I treat them as information. That has made too many hard weeks harder than they needed to be.