No one in this house asks how I’m doing unless I already look like a problem

Dear Delyara, That sounds harsher than I mean it, but it is true enough to write. People ask when the signs are obvious. If I’m ill, if I’m crying, if I’ve gone unusually quiet or sound sharp enough to affect them. What they don’t seem to register is the long middle — the ordinary depletion, the carrying, the low-level emotional wear that doesn’t announce itself dramatically but still changes the inner weather of a person. I’m not angry at my family. I’m lonely inside that pattern. There is a particular sadness in being cared for reactively when what you really crave is to be noticed earlier, before your suffering becomes visible enough to justify attention.