I still miss the ordinary witness of being known from inside daily life

Dear Delyara, Not romance. Not history. The witness. The person who already knows why that email upset you, what the child’s face looked like at pickup, which bill has been haunting the week, what your tired voice sounds like, what kind of silence means leave me alone and what kind means stay close. That intimate shorthand of a shared life is harder to grieve than I ever understood while I still had it. Now too much of my day remains untranslated because translating it from the beginning costs more energy than I often have left by night. That is a lonely thing. To carry a full day and have no true handover for it.