The End of Days

Some days you're a bug, some days you're a windshield.
- Price Cobb

Every now and then, I have one of those days.   Lately, they've seemed to creep up on me more and more often, much like the knowledge that your gray hairs are multiplying at a rapid rate when it seems like you just spotted your first stray one.

"Those" days are the days when nothing feels right and everything feels wrong.  When I find myself pressing the heels of my trembling hands firmly into my eyes in an effort to....I don't know, keep the tears from falling?  Keep everything from falling?  When I'm scared to speak for fear if I start talking, I won't be able to stop and it will be a rambling diatribe that I'll never be able to take back.  When I'm trying desperately to flip the switch from the dark room in my mind that makes this feel like the most daunting, impossible, never-ending task (as if "task" is a strong enough word) and instead find the bright sunny room that I just know exists somewhere in this house I call my brain.

Those days make being a parent, more specifically a parent that doesn't work but instead focuses all time and energy to a person one-fourth your size, so monumentally trying and taxing.  Those days make bedtime seem like an imaginary friend you'll never see, a desert mirage when you're dying of thirst, a bitter barking laugh when there is nothing amusing in sight. 

Every now and then, when I'm in the midst of one of those days, when I think about the years and years ahead of me consisting of meals and questions and messes and tears (both hers and mine) and sleepless nights and anxiety and the pure constant presence of someone that relies on me for everything, I don't understand how anyone has ever done it...how anyone continues to do it...much less with the lack of resources and support I am lucky enough to have at my disposal. 

But.  But.  Following the every now and thens, I take a look around, take a deep breath, and take stock...and that's when I realize it's so much more than that.   The questions are the precipice of growth, knowledge, and understanding.  The anxiety stems from a love so deep it can neither be rivaled nor questioned in its intensity and extremity.  The tears and messes remind me that even though it's not always tidy and neat, once you've cleaned it up, it can and will be bright and shiny and refreshed again. The constant presence is my purpose, an expansion of myself, and without it I would have no tether and no reason to strive for more.

At the end of one of those days, the deflated person I seem to find myself to be will be filled again.