She was at the sink after dinner, rinsing plates on autopilot, when her mind wandered through the week’s conversations. One person needed reassurance, another needed soothing, someone else needed space to pour out their frustration. She could recall the tone of each voice, the pauses, even the sighs, as if her body stored their weight.
Halfway through scrubbing a pan, something nudged her attention: not one of those people had asked how she was. The thought didn’t sting. It simply landed, oddly plain, like finding a doorway in a wall you’d walked past your whole life.
She finished the dishes and sat down at the kitchen table. The room was quiet in that late-evening way, where the day has ended but hasn’t quite let go. She tried to remember the last time someone looked at her and genuinely checked in — really looked, not out of etiquette but curiosity — and her memory couldn’t find a reference point.
It wasn’t that she was surrounded by unkind people. They trusted her because she was good at hearing things before they were spoken. As a child she had learned to spot tension early, smoothing it out before anyone tripped over it. That ability matured into instinct; instinct became identity.
People mistook it for kindness. She began mistaking it for belonging.
Sitting there, she could feel how automatic it had become. She was the emotional translator in every room, anticipating storms, patching leaks, offering warmth like it cost nothing. Only tonight did it occur to her that it might have cost something after all.
She leaned back, letting her hands rest in her lap. The quiet felt unfamiliar, almost like it was waiting for her. She tried forming sentences about her own day, her own feelings, but the words came out thin in her mind, as if the language had never fully developed.
It wasn’t sadness she felt — more like recognition. Caring outwardly for so long had left her inward life underfed. She hadn’t abandoned herself on purpose; she simply forgot she existed outside service.
No grand decision followed. Just a subtle shift. Maybe next time she wouldn’t rush to solve someone’s discomfort. Maybe she’d notice her own before offering her energy. Small changes rarely look like change — they look like breathing differently.
The dishes were done. The room stayed still. Nothing outward changed, yet something inside had moved — a chair pulled up at a table that had never seated her.
That was enough for an evening.
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