I wanted someone else to answer the school WhatsApp group

Dear Delyara, One message about costumes. One about snacks. One reminder about donations. One vague question that six parents somehow answered as if it were a major community crisis. I looked at the screen and felt instant resistance in my whole body. It’s not that the messages are individually awful. It’s the accumulation. The way school life now enters my home through a phone at all hours and expects the same calm attention as if I weren’t already holding fifteen other invisible things in my head. I read them. I did not reply. And then I felt guilty for not replying. That, too, feels very modern and very exhausting.