She Didn’t Cheer Me Up

Dear Delyara, Thank God. I was too tired to be inspired. Too sad to be improved. Too emotionally scraped raw to have someone hand me perspective before I had even put my pain down on the table. So when I told her how I really felt — angry, behind, lonely in my marriage, embarrassed by my own neediness, tired of being responsible — and she didn’t rush to silver-line any of it, I wanted to hug her through the phone. She just stayed. She asked one more question. Then another. Not to fix me. To find me. I didn’t realize how starved I was for that until the call ended and I felt less ashamed than before it began. Sometimes the holiest thing someone can do is resist the urge to make you sound stronger than you feel.