Tall Talk

"Ever feel like you're life is swallowing you whole?"

I like to send texts to people sometimes, just to check in with everyone around me, see who might be going through what I'm going through, and who might suggest I seek a mental health evaluation.

Lately I feel like I'm sealed in a goddamned wooden box that's getting airmailed to a remote, desolate location. Hunched inside, legs folded up to my armpits, I punch at the walls of it, I scratch my nails bloody trying to claw my way out, and yet, I cannot escape.

I also have a flair for the dramatic, you might have noticed.

And I tend to get obnoxiously hyperbolic when I've gone too long doing the single mom thing without even the teensiest of breaks. And I don't count an 8 hour workday where I am so busy I forget to pee for three hours in a row as a break. I just don't. Woe is me! No, I'm not starving and I don't have dust in my eyes and flies all over me because I live in a place where the soil is too dry to grow food and the infant mortality rate is through the roof. I have a home. Good people in my life. A fantastic, inventive and adorable kid.

But being a single mom is hands down the hardest thing I've ever done. I remember siting in my therapist's office years ago, idly throwing around the idea of leaving my husband, while simultaneously fiddling with the tassels on this wonderful woman's beautiful moroccan pillows and honking my nose into her deliciously soft, expensive tissues. At the time it was a spark of an idea, a fleeting thing I sometimes played with to when I was feeling really out of sorts. It was certainly nothing I ever thought I'd have no choice about in a few years. 

I was struck with the severity with which she looked me dead on and said, "Being a single mother is the hardest thing in the world. No matter how bad things may seem right now, they'd be ten times harder if you didn't have someone to do it with."

She was right. As much as I love it just being us sometimes--me and Lily, just the girls, doing it our way! --sometimes it's downright terrifying. A lot of the time, actually. I worry about her all the time. And when I'm not worrying about her, I'm worrying about money. Basically when I wake up at 4 am listening to the cats chase each other around the kitchen, and I stare at the ceiling, wondering if maybe god is there or what, my brain skitters between fear of my kid not wanting to tell her secrets to me and fear that we both might end up being homeless. It's hard to fight these fears, this crushing darkness that seems always to be around the corner, beckoning me like a cartoon shadow with a finger like a curl of smoke, saying, come on, Kristin.

Fall.

Just fall.

Sometimes it seems so delightfully simple. I spend so much time trying to be awesome -- she's a super mom! She's so creative! Look at her cooking pumpkin soup and sewing a halloween costume at the same time with her 8 awesome arms after working a full day and taking care of her kid! And wow! Her house is so clean! You can't even smell all the fucking cats that live there! (oh wait. Maybe you can)--

it gets tiring. Sometimes I just want to strip off all my clothes and lay down on my back and lose myself for hours. Sometimes I want to walk and walk until my feet get blisters. Sometimes I want to drink a goddamned jug of chardonnay.

Sometimes I feel like crumpling, like one of those paper marionettes with the accordion legs. Someone let go of the strings and I need them to pick em the hell back up. Just a teeny bit of guidance. A push, a kiss on the forehead. A whisper, "Everything's going to be alright". 

Because I know that it is. It's just that sometimes I need a little reminder.