Bits and pieces in my head
It kills me that I’m seven years older than he ever will be. He was 20 when he died, a year and a half older than me. Now I’m 27, but he is still frozen in time at 20.
I don’t have a photograph of him, which has always made me sad. Not that I need it; I can still see his face so clearly. Still, it would be wonderful to have. I’m terrified of losing the details over time.
I often think about writing a letter to his parents. I want to tell them how much their son meant to me and what a wonderful person he truly was. I’ve been wanting to write this letter for 8 years, but I’ve always been afraid of making them cry.
When I googled his name, I was saddened to discover that it pulls up no hits. Not one. I almost want to write a page in his memory, with his full name, but I’m afraid to, because I’m not ready to come out with my real identity. I’m not ready for people to see that and wonder who I am, slowly ticking through his friends until it all fits into place.
He used to come to the restaurant where I worked, which he worked at before I started, and have dinner with me. I don’t remember if it was every night, but it was quite often. I would wait to take my break until he came, and then we would go downstairs to the empty section and eat together. I had such a crush on him, but we were friends, and I didn’t know if he wanted anything more than that. I’ve never been one to make the first move, and while I realize that he went out of his way to be nice to me, he was the type of guy who went out of his way to be nice to everyone, so that didn’t necessarily mean anything. It’s one of those mysteries that I’ll never have an answer to, and I kick myself for never trying to get the answer while he was still around.
He was the one that I wanted to take to prom. God, I wanted to ask him to prom. I tried, sort of, but I never could get the words out. In the end, I asked a guy that I didn’t even like all that much, and it never felt right. I always wished I had asked Trey instead. After he died, I most definitely regretted not getting up the courage to ask. Prom night, to put it nicely, sucked balls. With Trey, I have a feeling that it would not have done so.
My friend had her laptop at work one night. She let Trey mess around on it while she was working, and afterwards, we discovered that he had changed the main loading screen on Windows 98 to read Winblows 98. He did something to the My Computer icon too, but I just realized that I can’t remember what he made it say…something with his name in it. My, that loss of a memory is upsetting.
When K called to tell me that he had died, I told her to come to my house. Then I hung up and called a couple more friends, told them the terrible news, and told them to come over. We all sat in the massage room at my mom’s house and cried and cried and cried. It was unreal. We were still reeling over the loss of B, and I didn’t even know that I had any more tears left in my body. It turns out, I did. I still do.
I wonder if I’ll ever get over the loss of this friend. I wonder if a Christmas season will ever go by without tears. I wonder if I’ll ever be able to remember him dearly without wanting to burst into tears at his all-too-early departure from this world. I try to make myself smile, because I know that’s what he would have wanted. That’s what he would be doing, if our roles were reversed. So I smile, even if just for a moment, before the sadness washes over me once more.
Maybe nine years will be the turning point. Maybe next year will be the year I finally don’t cry. Eight years, long as it may sound, is just not long enough.
This day in my history
Eight years and a few days ago, I received some terrible and shocking news. A high school friend, a crazy and happy guy, had killed himself. Here’s an excerpt from my old journal, written on the day of his funeral.
B had just gotten fired from his job because he had been skipping work so much to study for finals and that day he got his grades and he failed two finals, meaning he failed two classes, meaning that he was going to get kicked out of school for a semester and kicked out of his fraternity and him and his girlfriend had just broken up and all the grades and stuff were in his car and he was driving home from school to here for vacation and he went dove hunting last week so his gun was in the car and he pulled over, put it in park and shot himself and when he shot himself his leg spasmed, hitting the gas pedal and making the engine do something bad so his car was smoking so a lady pulled over to see if he needed help and she found him.
Shit, 19-year-old me could write some run-on sentences, huh? In my defense, I could hardly see the screen through my tears. Because that’s not where the pain stops.
Eight years ago today, my friend B was buried.
Eight years ago today, right after B’s funeral, I got some more terrible and shocking news.
Eight years ago today, my very dear friend died. Again, here are my words from that awful day:
i just turned nineteen. i’m supposed to be collecting love letters, not obituaries. especially not two in one week. trey was honestly the nicest guy i’ve ever met in my entire life. but this morning he was driving in parker county behind an 18-wheeler. the truck stopped really fast to avoid hitting a dog and trey couldn’t stop in time. he slammed right into it. trey died because of a fucking dog. i feel so empty. life got brighter every time he came around. i could be having the worst day ever, then trey just magically shows up and everything’s so much better. he always wore rollerblades. i went to my first concert with him. it was very last minute, because the guy i was going to go with decided not to go. i was complaining about and trey offered to take me instead. then after the first band he left to go find an atm and witnessed a car wreck and gave the people a ride and helped them out and everything. that’s just the kind of guy he was. he can’t be gone. it’s not fair. he’s trey. he’s not allowed to die. he’s invincible. he got in a wreck with a semi a few months ago and he only got a scratch. the car was totalled. he can’t be dead. why? i don’t understand. i had doubts before, but now i know there can’t be a god. he would never be so cruel. and all this happened just a few days after a guy i used to go to school with shot himself. [story cut, see above] i thought i was torn up when i found out about b…but when k called about trey…fuck. i can’t deal with this. it’s not fair. it’s not fair. i’ve cried so much and when i finally stop, i picture trey with his goofy little smile and it all comes rushing out again. why trey? there has never been a kinder person on this earth. he was only twenty. he can’t be gone. fuck. i hate life.
As you can see, I was a mess. December 20, 2000, was probably the most devastating day in my life. I mean, I cried and cried and cried about one friend, until I thought I had nothing left. Then right after his funeral, I got a call telling me about my other, much closer friend. Words cannot describe the pain.
Eight years later, and I still tear up. If I get stuck driving behind a semi-truck on the highway, I suddenly feel like I can’t breathe. Eight years is a long time to mourn. Maybe it’s made worse by the holiday timing. I know that I’ve never had a truly merry Christmas ever since. I try, but I get so sad. This morning, I realized I had to write about it. Since then, I’ve tried, and it still feels clunky.
Every time I start to tell my story, I get interrupted. I feel like I’ve been holding back a giant cry since yesterday morning, when I found myself stuck behind a semi on my way to work. I couldn’t cry then, because I was driving to work. I started telling J the story today, but I was interrupted by my mother’s call. When I finally got back to telling the story again, she called back. My tears have been interrupted so many times that I wonder if I’ll ever be able to get them all out.
Writing was supposed to help me deal with this. Instead, I feel like throwing the whole thing out. I can’t stand to go back and edit, or else I will end up deleting. One hell of a way to come back from a six-week hiatus, for sure.
This isn’t the post about the ex; it’s the post about the writing of the post about the ex.
Do you ever have so many things to say that words explode from your fingertips, leaving a big wordy mess that’s impossible to post, both because it goes into way too much detail AND because you haven’t explained things nearly enough? That’s the point that I’m at tonight. I want to explain my feelings about getting an email from an ex, and why he’s been on my mind lately, but when I started writing about it, I kind of exploded. I’ve never mentioned him before, and it felt necessary to give at least a bit of background on us. Then I fast-forwarded to explain the last time we talked, and how that came to be. Then I tried vaguely explaining why I wanted to talk to him, but had to pause to explain why a certain Dateline show has caused me to feel weird about things in my past, memories that have never been anything but good. (That is its own long-awaited post, one that I’ve had trouble writing on multiple occasions.) And, of course, I have to explain why none of it means anything, but it feels like it might mean something, and how I wish I could tell J about the email, but he’s sleeping, and I don’t know what to do. And that’s just the half of it.
So I’ve got this would-be post that’s getting longer by the second, threatening to explode its wordy goo all over somefatchick.com, with nary a point in sight. Do I trim back the unnecessary? Do I go into even more detail, so it makes more sense? Do I post a series of shorter posts, leading up to my point? Do I scrap it all and start writing the whole thing over again, hoping that Pam’s method of giving Michael a test-run on phone calls will work for my writing as well?
Or do I simply leave the post sitting there, open up a new tab, and explain this frustrating writing process to you in a slightly manic-y, confusing post? Yes, that one.
Rumbly in my tumbly
Do you ever have one of those nights when neither one of you feel like cooking? And, even though not a word about food has been mentioned, you can feel the tension in the air as you both hold your ground, both pretending that you’re not starving, both keep on with the mindless internet activities, in hopes that the other one will give in to their own hunger and get up and just cook dinner already?
No? Just us? Okay.
Damn, I hope J gets hungry soon, ’cause I’m staaaarving. And lazy. Most definitely lazy.
Wow, so I haven’t written in almost two weeks, huh?
I’ve been busy doing a lot of things lately. Specific, huh? Can you spot the lie on this list?
- I aced my A&P midterm, scoring a 96 on my own, and a total of 101 with my bonus points.
- My husband’s crazy friend accused him, wrongly, of adultery.
- I found out that yet another childhood friend has a restraining order against them.
- I painted my kitchen.
- I watched the Sex and the City movie and was less than impressed.
- I finally got my 2nd dose of Hepatitis B vaccine at the Public Health Circus Clinic.
- I convinced a 3-year-old that shots are awesome.
- I nearly busted my ass at least once a day.
- I spent nearly half an hour after class alone with my teacher, talking about my grades, my habits, my future, and my possibilities.
- I started feeling more politically conflicted than ever, and wondered if I could just vote “D, none of the above.”
Did you guess #4? If you’ve been reading with me for awhile, I’ll bet that you did! Yes, it’s true. My kitchen is STILL primer white. I hang my head in shame. But all of the rest of it is absolutely true. At some point, I have considered writing about nearly all of the subjects mentioned. The idea that I’ll actually write about even one of them is laughable, but I’ll see what I can manage. Eventually. Maybe.
drunk and accidentally stumbled onto one of my worst memories
Wednesday, May 9th, 2001
12:24a
**ad’s making progress he’s still in critical condition in the trauma icu, but he’s stable. they’re weaning him off his sedative, so we got to communicate with him. he wrote some notes for us even! he doesn’t remember the accident at all, but the doctors say that’s normal. they also have him on a medication that makes him forget everything, so every time he wakes up, we have to tell him what’s going on.
he still has the breathing machine hooked up to his lung, and another tube to his stomach. wires and tubes all over. neck brace. his right eye is swollen shut, and it has a deep laceration above it with lots of stitches. another on his chin, but it’s hidden by the collar. cuts and bruises all over. the eye that he can open is totally red where it should be white. he has a concussion as well. no broken bones.
it’s so hard…he gets so frustrated, and i wish there was something i could do for him. i wish i could convince my mom to come home and get some rest. she’s barely slept at all since it happened. maybe a few hours last night on the floor in the waiting room. as long as **ad’s in icu, we can’t stay with him 24 hours a day.
they’re hoping to maybe get him totally off the ventilator/respirator machine tomorrow, so that will be great. if they do that, and he remains stable, then his condition will drop from critical to serious, and he can be moved to the trauma ward and have visitors other than family, which i know will make his friends happy.
the other kid, the driver, is already home.
current mood: 
drained
current music: sarah mclachlan – angel
Thursday, May 10th, 2001
3:54a
**ad is doing a whole lot better. his condition has dropped from critical to serious. this morning they turned the breathing machine off, but kept the tube in and a constant flow of pure oxygen running by it so he would get the good stuff. then they turned the oxygen off, and since he did so well with that, they drew blood to see if he was ready to get the tubes out. he was. first, they took out the tube that was down pumping his stomach, then i guess he got impatient and tried pulling the tube out of his lungs himself.
the nurse got it all the way out. he’s started to talk, which is great. he’s still real hoarse, but his voice has been getting a little stronger. first thing he asked was if he could take a shower. that’s been his major question all day long. we try to explain that he’s sorta connected to a million wires right now, but he still wants his shower. he’s also desperate to get the neck brace off. they’re going to take him down and do tests on it tomorrow to see if they can. he should also be moved down from icu to the trauma ward tomorrow if he remains as stable as he is, but he could possibly stay up there one more day. and once he goes to a private room, he’ll stay probably three more days. so i could have my brother home on sunday. what a wonderful mother’s day gift! he’s still on the sugar/salt water solution going in through the iv, but he can also have solid liquids now – ice cream, jello, pudding, etc. he must still be on some medication, because he’s been a little delirious tonight. we were feeding him his orange flurry and he said, “this is a weird interview.” my mom asked him if he knew he was in the hospital, and he said, “yeah, but i had an interview at best buy.” also, he asked where we were going after this. he also kept asking if he could just go home tonight and come back in the morning. but probably the funniest was when we were asked to leave, so mom told him that we were going to go now, so **ad started to pull his covers off like he was going with us. i’m so glad that he’s getting better though. we’ve still got a long way to go, but he’s having a remarkable recovery. everyone that’s in the waiting room with us tells us how lucky we are. and we are lucky. thank you for everyone that’s been sending their best wishes, thoughts, prayers, and positive vibes in our direction. it must be working.
3:59a
i guess i should explain *why* he’s in the hospital, huh?
**ad was riding home from school with his friend ryan on monday afternoon. they were leaving the school parking lot through the back exit. ryan lost control on the gravel and overcorrected himself, then overcorrected himself again, causing the jeep to flip over several times and crash into a utility pole. **ad was careflighted to the hospital, and ryan was taken to a different hospital in an ambulance. ryan was released that night, but **ad has stayed in icu since then.
i sent a tape recorder to school with **ad’s friend daniel so that his friends could leave him messages since they can’t see him. a few kids did it this afternoon and he really enjoyed it.
11:05a
just got off the phone with my mom. **ad’s a lot more coherent today. they’re going to be moving him to a private room later this afternoon, and dr. sloan said that he might be able to come home tomorrow! that’s incredible. last night he had to be restrained because he pulled his iv out and tried to take off his neck brace. matt, his night nurse, said that he asked him if he knew where he was and **ad said, “yes, i’m in the hospital department at best buy.” the combination of concussion and drugs had been sorta messing with his mind, but he’s getting clearer today. i also talked to ryan’s mom, and she said that he’s back at school today, so that’s good news too.
8:40p
**ad’s in his own room now. 487 in the richardson tower of harris downtown, for those of you from town. he’s doing great. eating solid foods, talking, walking…they think he might get released tomorrow.
Friday, May 11th, 2001
12:24p
**ad is going to be released today. right now he’s just waiting to get his ankle x-rayed (it’s super swollen) and then he’ll be on his way!
alexis and i made a beautiful pink banner with britney spears stickers all over for him. lol. that’s what i get for having a 3 year old assist me, eh?
2:01p
he’s on his way home as we speak!
Hilariously me
I’ve got my A&P lab mid-term on Monday, so naturally, I’m coming up with all kinds of other things to do instead of studying. I do that a lot. It hasn’t gotten so bad that I’ve started painting the bathroom or anything, but it’s getting there.
I haven’t told you too much about school, have I? The class is intense. Getting A’s has always come naturally to me, and I never really learned how to study. You can yell at me to shut up now. Most people do. But with this class, I realized on the first day that I was going to have to bust my ass if I was to survive. By “survive,” I mean, “get good enough grades to get into nursing school.” And by that, I really mean, “MUST GET AN A!”
We took our first lecture test last week, and I thought I did pretty well. Then he was telling us how awful the grades were, and said that he thought that most of us just didn’t understand what the questions were asking. Greeeat. I started getting scared. Then he said that the lowest grade was a 20-something. Eeep! The breakdown went like this – 9 F’s, 11 D’s, 10 C’s, 5 B’s, and 3 A’s, with the highest grade being a 93. Eeep! I started praying, wishing beyond belief that I had gotten the 93. He told us to add 6 points to our final score, which eased the fear a bit, but not by much. I was still praying when I heard him call my name.
“Please, 93, please, please, PLEEEEAAASE 93!” I silently begged as I walked down the stairs to get my test back. I was convinced that I knew who had the 93 already, but hey, a girl can dream, right?
Except I was wrong. That guy didn’t get the 93, because I DID! It took all my self-control to not scream and jump up and down when he handed me my test. I made my way back to my seat and sat down without a word. A few minutes later, the girl next to me asked if I had passed (she got a 50-something). I said yeah, and she grinned and said, “You got the 99, didn’t you?” I confessed. She begged for half my brain.
We weren’t more than 3 weeks into class when I somehow got labeled as “the smart one” – without any real reason that I could see. By last week, new people were mysteriously sitting by me in lab. J said, “Aw, you’ve been identified as the class nerd, haven’t you?” Possibly I have. I’m sure it threw my teacher for a loop, because I never talk in class. I never answer questions. I never ask questions. I sit in either the last row (lab) or the next-to-last row (lecture). I blend in. If he had to predict who would have gotten a ninety-freaking-nine on his hard-as-hell (but not really! ha!) test, I would not have even been in the running.
Oh, hey! You want to hear something REALLY funny? I’M SUPPOSED TO BE STUDYING! Ha ha ha, anxiety/stress avoidance/procrastination strikes again! Because I totally didn’t come here to tell you the I’m-a-nerd test score story, just to vent about my inability to focus, and OH MY GOD, I’M DOING IT AGAIN!
MUST.
STOP.
TYPING.
Cricky and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day
Cricky hasn’t written in awhile, it’s true. But can you blame her, really? After the time she’s been having lately? Hurricanes and national financial meltdowns are one thing, but this? This is enough to make anyone cry.
It all started with the dream last week.
Cricky awoke screaming after having a nightmare that the world had stopped producing sour candy. (As a fellow sour-addict, I totally feel her pain. I would have woken up screaming too.) Luckily, her screaming woke up Joe, who quickly discovered that she could not be calmed with his assurances. He sighed, threw on some clothes and run to the store to prove to his wife that yes, sour candies still existed. (Now that’s a good man!)
Slightly reassured by his determination, Cricky reduced her screaming to sobbing and started to go through the motions of getting ready for work. Then her cell phone rang. It was Joe, and his news was not good.
“The gas station is out of sour candies. I’m tired. I want to go back to bed. I’m coming home, and we’ll just get you some at the regular store later.”
As you can imagine, Cricky didn’t exactly take kindy to this message. I’m not sure of exactly what she said, but I think it went something like this – “Oh, darling Joe, sweet and wonderful husband of mine, I must insist, ever-so-nicely, that you please continue the search for the candy, if you would please be so kind as to do so?”
Joe mumbled something under his breath, then agreed to stop at one more store. Cricky decided she’d better start attempting to wake up Kelly. Kelly, like most girls her age, was not keen on the idea of getting out of bed. Fine. Ten more minutes. Fine.
Her dream still had Cricky in a bad mood, and Joe’s lack of success at bringing home the sour candy was not helping. Her phone rang again. “Babe? This is really weird, but the grocery store doesn’t have any sour candy either. No Brite Crawlers, no Sour Skittles, no Sour Patch Kids, no lemon drops, nothing! I can’t even find an empty spot on the shelf where they should be. I’m coming home,” Joe said.
“STAY RIGHT THERE!” Cricky screamed, as she frantically ran to her closet and started throwing on some clothes. “Kelly and I are going to meet you there in 10 minutes – DON’T MOVE!”
“But the store is at least 15 minutes away, and Kelly is probably still sleeping. Why don’t I ju-”
“This is an EMERGENCY. Don’t doubt for a second that my Shiny New Car can get us there. STAY PUT!”
Cricky, now dressed, ran into Kelly’s room, picked the girl up, and carried her out to the driveway, where the Shiny New Car was gleaming in the early morning sunshine. She threw Kelly in the backseat, where she promptly leaned against the glass and started snoring.
Cricky jumped in, threw the car into drive, and raced off to the store.
Nine minutes later, Joe’s jaw dropped. Cricky had made it all right, in record time. He could see her running in from the parking lot, pushing a shopping cart full of…their child? Yes, putting Kelly in the bottom part of the basket seemed like the best way to get to the store quickly, but really, she was getting much too old to be pushed, and the weight of the cart was slowing Cricky down considerably. She spotted Joe, yelled at him to get over there, then passed off Kelly to him as she raced into the candy aisle.
No shit. Joe wasn’t kidding. There was not a single piece of sour candy to be seen. Not even the teeniest, tiniest little SweetTart (and those things don’t even really qualify as sour anyway).
Cricky ran out of the store and nearly crashed head-on into Joe, who had grown tired of pushing the cart and was struggling to wake up his daughter. “There’s no time, just push her back to the car. We’ve got to get to the Super Fancy Candy Store on the other side of town. They’ll clear this whole mess up, for sure!”
So the family packed up into Cricky’s Shiny New Car, after a brief argument over which car would be taken, and headed out across town. Of course, by this point, they got stuck in horrific rush-hour traffic. Kelly, now wide awake, was wondering why she was in the car, in her pajamas, and hey, wasn’t she supposed to be in school today?
“Cricky had a bad dream, so we’re driving across town to the Super Fancy Candy Store to try to find some sour worms,” Joe explained.
Kelly looked at them both incredulously and shook her head. Sure, they always comforted her when she had a bad dream, but she never got rewarded with candy, and she sure as heck never got to miss school for it! Grown-ups really didn’t make any sense.
When they arrived at the Super Fancy Candy Store, they found it to be closed. Abandoned. The sign on the door informed them that, due to unforseen circumstances, the store would be closed until further notice. The sign also said that they should visit the Not-as-Cool, But Still Kinda Great Candy Store in the next town over.
Joe looked at Cricky, then quickly changed his mind about suggesting they go home. They loaded back in the car, and headed out of town.
Now here’s where things start to get strange. (Okay, stranger.)
They arrive at the Not-as-Cool, But Still Kinda Great Candy Store, and are excited to see that it’s open. Cricky tells Joe and Kelly to stay in the car, and then runs inside and up to the counter.
“I’d like 1 pound of Sour Patch Kids, please!” she tells the cashier.
The cashier freezes, then looks sideways at the manager, who slightly shakes his head. Then he turns back to Cricky. “Um, Sour Patch Kids? I’ve never heard of them. Is there anything else I can get for you today?”
“Okay, then I’ll take a pound of Brach’s Lemon Drops.”
Again, the cashier pauses. “Lemon drops? From Brach’s? I don’t think Brach’s makes lemon drops. In fact, I highly doubt that a thing called “lemon drops” even exists. Maybe you’d like some Starlight Mints? Or Maple Nut Goodies?”
“No,” Cricky says through clenched teeth, “I’d like something sour today. What do you have that’s sour?”
“Sour? Sour candy? Ma’am, I’m afraid you’re confused. Candy is sweet. That’s the whole point of it. If you’d like something sour, you could eat an orange, or a pickle, or a -”
The cashier is interrupted by Cricky’s scream as she runs to the door, signals to Joe, and storms back to the counter. She tells Joe what’s going on, and Joe demands a manager.
The manager, looking quite nervous, approaches the two slowly. “Y-y-yes, may I help you this morning?” he asks.
“Yeah, you can give us some answers! Why is this punk kid telling my wife that candy doesn’t come in sour? OF COURSE CANDY COMES IN SOUR! I demand to know what’s going on around here! I’ve been up since before the buttcrack of dawn, and have driven to I don’t even know how many stores in search of sour candy, just to quiet my wife’s fears that sour candy doesn’t exist anymore, only to have your employee tell her that sour candy never existed in the first place? WHAT IS GOING ON?”
“Sir, okay. Quiet your voice, and I’ll try to explain.” The manager looks around, then summons them both to come back to his office. They take a quick peek out the window at Kelly, who is happily playing a DS in the back seat, and then follow the manager back to his office.
“Okay, here’s the deal,” he tells them. “It’s true. Sour candies do exist.”
“No kidding! Not impressed. Keep talking,” Cricky says.
“It’s just that, well, the sugar industry has launched an attack on the citric acid industry, and it’s not looking good.”
“There’s a citric acid industry? Really?” Joe asks. The manager nods solemnly.
“Oh yes, and the sugar industry has become tired of them. Not only are they trying to prevent them from producing more sour candy, they’re trying to convince the world that sour candy never existed in the first place!”
“What can we do about it?” Cricky asks.
“There’s not much that can be done about it, unless…”
“Unless WHAT?”
“Well, unless…how serious are you about wanting the sour candy back? How dedicated could you be to the cause? How far are you willing to go, to bring justice back to this world?”
Joe and Cricky looked at each other, then back at the manager. “We’re willing to do whatever it takes.”
The manager looks in their eyes, sees that they’re serious, and says, “Okay. Take your daughter to school, then meet me at this address. And don’t tell ANYONE.”
At this point, the story gets fuzzy. I know that they dropped Kelly off at school, with instructions for Marci to pick her up and care for her until further notice. And then no one heard from them. Because of the top-secrecy of their mission, it is unknown what may have happened in the past week. If you ask Cricky, she closes her eyes for a moment, sighs, and then says, “But it was all worth it in the end. We did what we had to do.”
So that’s why we have’t heard from Cricky in awhile. After presumably neutralizing the aggressive sugar industry, she curled up on the couch with her lifetime supply of sour candy, a thank-you gift, I’m sure, from the once-again thriving citric acid industry. Will she back to blog? Signs point to yes, but, for now, let’s let her have a bit of time to recover. It’s not exactly easy to fight for the good of the world.
The End.
Truth
This is actually part of a comment I left for Metalia, but I realized that I was speaking more honestly than I ever have on the subject, and I wanted to save it here. You know, for posterity. Nope. Not for posterity at all. Just for me.
I’m not a mom, but I have been filling in for them for over 7 years, and while I really, truly love my job, I’ve recently become very frightened of having my own children. It’s not the 9-10 hours of daytime activities that scare me, it’s the part where 5:00 ticks on by and no one is coming home to release me, the part where I don’t get to unwind after work. I cannot fathom watching a child all day long, then not getting to escape at the end of it. I can’t imagine going from getting paid a lot of money for a relatively short work week to working nonstop, every single day, for nothing. Even though I know that it’s different when it’s your own kid, I worry that I will resent the fact that I don’t get to escape. And then I start to feel prematurely guilty that I had so much energy to take care of so many other kids, and I feel like if I *don’t* stay home full-time to watch my own child, they’ll be getting cheated. I’m afraid I’ll count the hours of quality time with them and realize that I spent more hours a week with someone else’s child than I ever spent with my own. That future is years away, but I’m already struggling with it.
I can’t explain myself
Even though I’m exhausted, and even though I made myself stop studying almost an hour ago, and even though I’m completely bored with the internet, and even though I am, in fact, lying in bed RIGHT NOW, I can’t make myself turn off the computer and go to sleep. What the hell, Em? What the HELL?
