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July 25th, 2022

On the hardest days, motherhood feels like an absolute deviation from my life path.  Like it's the worst thing I could possibly be doing this incarnation and today.

It's summertime. No thousand dollar sports camp this week. I take them out for bagels; three bagels. Two are toasted and one thing of plain cream cheese with one knife. We're wrapping up and this mother exits with her toddler son. She's swollen pregnant with another. She asks her son to get four napkins from the napkin holder. It takes him quite a bit of time, counting and praiseful discussion. The boys watch me watch them. The mom is acting very proud. I want to ask her if she's really proud or if she wants to get in her car and curve into the endless oncoming traffic. They waddle off. Eye contact with my sons. Tremendous patience. It really boils down to tremendous patience. I'm not that patient. Repetition challenges my mental health. I wish I could turn off part of my brain and just be in the patience, the role, somehow turn off enough to find any sense of actual fulfillment in the monotonous drudgery tasked to mothers alone. But all I feel on these, the hardest of days, is the pain of the chasm between what I am doing and what I want to be doing. I feel like I'm wasted.

I tell myself it would help if at least my sons could understand — understand that I am still here even though I've drowned a thousand deaths. I don't know why I think I need them to get IT. So backwards and likely some stratum of —

but,

my throat is swollen like I'm allergic

so hard to breathe