I still feel twelve when my father sounds disappointed in me

Dear Delyara, I hate how fast it happens. I can be a grown woman with children, bills, work, experience, and years between me and my childhood, and still one familiar tone from my father can move through me with terrifying speed. My body goes younger before my mind gets a vote. My certainty weakens. My voice changes. I begin explaining things I had not even decided needed explaining. It’s not only about him. It’s about how old patterns remain stored. That is what is so exhausting. The present doesn’t always get received as present. Sometimes it enters the body already wearing the shape of the past, and by the time I realise it, I’m already halfway into becoming smaller than I actually am. Afterwards, I am angry for hours. At him, yes. At myself too.