I stopped saying “I’m just tired” and finally admitted my mind has been carrying more darkness than I have wanted to name

Dear Delyara, That sentence came out like a confession. Because “tired” is such an acceptable word. Adults are tired. Mothers are tired. Workers are tired. Women are tired. The word lets us go half-unseen in a way the truth does not. But I knew it was not only tired. It was low. It was flat. It was heavy. It was the kind of inner distance that makes ordinary life feel difficult to inhabit from the inside, even while you keep doing everything required from the outside. When I finally named that properly — to myself, then to someone else — I felt less elegant and much more honest. And honesty changed everything. Not the circumstances. The care. The seriousness. The quality of my own attention toward what I have been living inside. That is a real victory. Not because it was beautiful. Because it was accurate.