I wanted someone else to ask about my day properly

Dear Delyara, Not the quick version. Not the polite version. Not the version where I have two seconds to decide whether honesty is socially worth the effort. I wanted someone to ask in a way that made room for a complicated answer. A real answer. The kind that includes tiredness, money, work, small hurts, old loneliness, the child’s mood, my own mood, and the fact that no single sentence can hold the actual shape of a day anymore. Instead, I got “You okay?” And I said, “Yeah, just tired.” That sentence is doing too much work in my life. And not nearly enough truth.