Tuesday

I groggily switch the laundry over, throwing the clean towels onto an already huge pile of “to fold later” items on the dresser, and climb into bed. Maybe I should have brushed my hair today. I didn’t take the girls outside the house at all, and how much TV did I let them watch again? Did I really let them have Lucky Charms for lunch?

I look at my husband, the man I met my last semester in Nursing School, ask him about his day. He tells me how busy it is at work, and we scroll through some funny videos on Tik Tok, mostly tired parenting memes and funny animal videos. 

I tell him about the time I ran for office my senior year. That failed skit I did in high school, how I tried to sing a medley about how I’d make a great SBO, and nobody could really even hear my voice, and I probably made a few mistakes because I never practiced much on the piano, ever. How my mom had given it away that the current SBO’s were surprising me for a video one night, telling me I should “probably pick up my room a bit.” How they all stormed in to wake me up and I subconsciously knew they were coming, and it ruined the entire thing and wasn’t even funny at all. The entire school had watched it, and I wanted to melt away into the folding auditorium seats and not come back. A simulacrum of vulnerability, pure 18-year old shame. And then Maddie Busteed had done some funny YouTube skit, and killed it in the impromptu video, and I had lost SBO to her. 

“I voted for you,” he says. 

And my entire body is suddenly still— my breath catching in my throat. Why did I even still think about high school, ever? This incredible, living, breathing human being is sitting right in front of me, and I have his vote on life. The shame collapses in on itself inside me and I feel so much peace and gratitude as I look at him. Maybe the only real definition of success is to love and be loved, I think. And in that moment I know it to be true.

A dramatic poem I wrote at 3 AM about my brain and how it functions whilst muscling through the forty-eighth virus my kids have caught this winter.

Winter is swift, cold

And with it, sickness drops on my daughters like a cloak

Thick and sleepless nights return 

All too familiar 

yet shocking like ice 

Coughs and tissues and tears 

And my once seemingly strengthening mind falters and crumbles 

Weakened by those interrupted hours. 

Soon the dark circles 

I care for little else than sleep 

My mind is unhinged 

My focus is dim

sleep

Please, sleep

No 

coughs and tissues and tears 

And now, what is this? 

Anxiety.

Yes- 

My familiar sister

She rears her familiar head. 

She cripples my chances

She clutches sleep further out of reach. 

Cough and tissues and tears 

And now, anxiety 

Because when sleep is scant, she always pays a visit

She makes herself comfortable 

Around and around she goes 

and my mind like a dance 

Will they heal from this ?

Am I helpless in watching

Are they still breathing ?

Almost in slumber 

But stop, are they still breathing ?

What if they’ve been entangled 

They must need me

Do not give in to the sleep 

Entangled mind 

Did I plug in the humidifier?

Is she still breathing? 

Please keep breathing 

Check 

and check again 

Round and round and round