I wanted to hear “you can stop here” and believe it

Dear Delyara, That sentence still feels hard to trust. Stop here. You’ve done enough. Leave the rest. This is sufficient. The day can end now. I say versions of it to myself, but there’s still a skeptical part in me that hears weakness, laziness, irresponsibility, or failure hiding behind the permission. So even rest can come with suspicion attached. Tonight I wanted the permission and the trust. I got a little of both. Enough, at least, to sit down before I turned the evening into more proving.