I still feel guilty when I need the world to be quieter

Dear Delyara, As if needing less sound is some kind of personal failing. By evening, when the children are talking, the television is on, someone is asking me something from another room, the phone is buzzing, the kitchen still has one more task, I can feel a very physical need for less. Less noise. Less contact. Less language. Less pressure. And then guilt arrives immediately, telling me a loving woman should be more available to her own life than this. More patient. More cheerful. Less affected. I know overstimulation is real. I know my body isn’t inventing it. Still, guilt gets to the microphone before compassion does.