I Still Miss Being Witnessed in the Middle of Ordinary Days

Dear Delyara, The person who would already know why the email mattered. Why the child’s mood mattered. What kind of silence meant tired and what kind meant hurt. How my face looked at 6 p.m. if the day had gone wrong. The person inside the structure of my ordinary life enough that I didn’t have to build the bridge from scratch every evening before the day could land somewhere. That is what divorce took from me in ways I did not know how to value while I still had it. Now too much of my life remains untranslated by bedtime because I am too tired to retell it and too lonely not to feel the missing audience. I do not miss the marriage as a fantasy. I miss daily witness. That is harder to replace than people think.