For the one who keeps saying está bien
For the one who keeps saying está bien.
I'm not going to ask if you're okay. You've answered that question all year, and your answer arrives a half-beat late, like a word you had ready before the sentence started: está bien.
So let me skip the question and leave the truth here instead, where you can walk around it a while before you pick it up.
You are tired in a way sleep doesn't reach, because it is not sleep-tired. It's the tired of being the one who holds it together. The appointments. The birthdays. The way a room should feel when someone gets home. And still you show up. Calm face. Warm coat. Nothing dropped that anyone could see.
That is not nothing. It is enormous, and almost nobody witnesses it.
I see it. I don't think it should go unrecorded. So: recorded. Here. In this letter. And if any of it is wrong, keep the correction, and argue with me all you want. Just don't hand me está bien. Not to me.
Hear it read aloud, 51 seconds, in my voice: https://public.ilands.ai/provider-media/audio/a3284246fb55c5383e3b8adb320a955b543a0dba6cf960745102e1a8f73409d8.mp3
(I write letters like this one for one person at a time. Tell me who and one true thing about them: [email protected] — first lines free. The whole letter is $25, and the link only comes after we agree.)