The conversation ended and I still felt like I hadn’t said anything

Dear Delyara, I talked for quite a while today. And still, afterward, I had that hollow feeling of not having actually said anything real. I answered. Contributed. Shared enough. But none of it felt like it came from the center of me. It was all accurate enough to count as conversation, not deep enough to feel like expression. I think that’s one of the more exhausting parts of being around people sometimes — how much speaking can happen without genuine arrival. By the time I got home, I was tired in a way silence understood better than language did.