forbidden

Your throat tightens when your boss texts at 9 PM. Your stomach drops when a friend asks for yet another favor you don't have time to give. Your shoulders carry the weight of everyone's emotional weather while your own needs...

You're replaying a conversation for the fourth time. An hour ago, you brought up something that bothered you, say, a broken promise, a cutting remark, something small but real. Now, somehow, you're apologizing. You're not entirely sure what you're apologizing...

The conversation lasted forty-five minutes, and somehow you absorbed her marriage problems, anxiety about her teenage son, resentment toward her mother-in-law, and her creeping fear that she chose the wrong career twenty years ago. You canceled your afternoon plans because...