I still leave family rooms more tired than I enter them

Dear Delyara, Family gatherings are strange for me because they are never only about the present. Even when nothing openly bad happens, I leave tired in a way that doesn’t match the actual event. I think it is because so much older emotion remains active in those rooms. Old roles. Old assumptions. Old ways of making myself manageable before speaking. Old instincts to read tone, protect people, soften truths, perform ease. Love is there. So is history. And history takes energy.