Manifest

Sometimes I don't know where to turn.

The usuals aren't working:  the silence, knockoff Oreos, sideburns of sun on the too-tall grass in our backyard, or the third glass of wine.  Nothing, none of it's working right now.

So I turn inward and starve myself from connection, figuring nobody can touch what they can't see.  Then, in a mean twist of chemistry and human condition, I turn it outward and clean the crumbs from underneath the plate of a child who is still eating.  Nothing, none of it's working right now.

I don't go for the spiral, the deep dive down in to the well where things are just plain pitiful.  Mostly because that is selfish crap.  We all have this sometimes.  Nobody is saved from their lives.

But it's there.  The desire to be saved.  To be taken by the wrist, shown the way down the dark hall, sat down in a place I don't recognize, and held strong by someone - anyone- who means it.

I'm no more tired than you.  Not in the physical, more something else to do with your worn out soul-ical.  Your fatigue from life and mine are the same.  And utterly different, all the time.  Because it's work.  We all have it.  We wake up, nobody but us steers the day.  We look at the clock to see how much longer we have, as if a certain whistle gets blown at a certain hour.  We fix dinner we won't ourselves eat, we make more dishes like an evil boomerang.  I swear I just washed this knife.  We hide in our bathroom from more innocent chatter about impossible treehouses and Spongebob.  We are found by all sets of eyes, human, canine, and now feline.  We can't hide from life.  Life finds you and has you clock the hell back in.

Because there is no clocking out.

I never knew that.  I should've, but I didn't.  I figured there were diapers, formula, bouncy seats, playdates, wine, and then YAY school!  Oh, dear HayZeus, how naive of me to think there was a space between.  The only spaces I've found in between is laundry.  The beautiful puzzle of laundry that allows me to pine for sister wives, churning butter, and sharing a man who will only annoy the sh*t out of me once a month.

It's going to be fine because fine is what I'm after.  No epic knowledge of home making.  No epiphanies about child rearing or "finding myself in the mundane."  If I haven't found myself by now, there may not be real reason to keep looking.  I've been here all along, cursing, singing, writing, saving dogs.  It takes more than gray hair and eyebags to suffocate that girl who refuses to go out without a fight.

Manifest.  I keep saying this word to myself:  manifest.  Manifest the will to keep pushing through the muck and the sludge in the miracle likelihood there is someone at the end of this to hug me tightly.  To show me that love and willpower are, in fact, always met with the reward of a brighter day.

And by brighter, I totally mean overcast with over a 60% chance of rain.