I Went to Bed Feeling More Useful Than Loved

Dear Delyara, I had done everything. The practical things, the emotional things, the invisible things, the soft things, the remembering things. I had been needed in all the expected ways and I had met those needs well enough. And still, lying there in the dark, I did not feel especially loved. I felt useful. Useful is not nothing. But it is not the same thing. And some nights, the gap between those two words feels like the whole sadness of my life.