My Stroke(s)

I was watching "One Day", the sweet rom-com on TV today, fast forwarding through 1 hour within a span of 15 minutes. When Anne Hathaway asks the newest waiter at the Mexican restaurant she worked at, "What's your stroke? Waiter/Writer, Waiter/Actor?" I realised that I have had more than my share of them, lately. 

Perennially exhausted new mom

/ lamentably absent wife 

/ demanding daughter 

/ surly daughter-in-law 

/ semi productive freelancer 

/ paranoid house cleaner 

/ ex-dreamer of dreams

I have landed smack dab in the exact place I did NOT want to be - biting off more than I can chew. Struggling to join the loose ends and just creating more in the process. 

Family obligations mean that I cannot work as much as I would like. Neither can I finish the unpacking that has been pending since we moved (almost a month now), or run any other errands. I am stuck composing eloquent sentences in my head, reading Seneca on my phone and wishing I could type as fast with my thumb as with all my fingers on a laptop keyboard. Oh, did I forget? All while crooning "ahhh" the little one to sleep. Then I put her down and my eyelids droop. 15 minutes, I tell myself. 

Then she is crying herself awake and I am rushing over with help and comfort. 

A and I make plans to go for a movie but my parents have to go out of town and I am babysitting. A wants his mom home, and I think: can I really take more? 

Really, how much more can I take? How much longer? How much farther? Should I be grateful that she is not crawling yet? That she is not speaking yet? Or walking? That I got what I wanted? That it has to come like this, at this cost, because I cannot not do it perfectly?

When I have eaten last? A cup of lukewarm milk at 11am. It's 4pm now and I have lost my appetite. The little one reads my moods like a book. So she cries and I make funny faces at her, which works. She wants to picked up and I take us both out for a walk. 

Nietzsche gives me company every now and then, telling me that what doesn't kill me only makes me stronger. I suppose I will have the hollowed out eyes, stained clothes and sticky hair to show for it soon enough. Dwindling bank balance - I already have - so that's one item accomplished. 

It's a deep, dark tunnel, this one. Minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day. That's how it's done.