Today’s Mom Tears are brought to you by “A million little deaths” and “The shower runs cold before I’m done crying in there”

NEWS FLASH*** I feel like a complete fraud. 

I have recently been told by someone that they wished they had the same attitude I did when it came to looking for the bright side of things.

Sure, you do …. Absolutely DO NOT want to continually place wagers on the next exact moment you will die a little bit inside.  Wait in nervous anticipation for feeling like the punch line in a joke you had no clue was being told. To relive events that may have shaped you laying dormant just long enough that their cut no longer stings …. the trigger gets pulled and I am back in the moment echoes of the bullet spinning through the shaft before the deafening BANG.   

I just smiled and replied; “It is in you.”

I am in the last half of my life. Am I doing it correctly? I have no  ?@%&*>$ clue!  Like some of you I traded youth and personal growth to raise a family. Put everything on hold for someone else. Lived my days through the growing pains of children. The person I wanted to be lay somewhere in a coma. I forgot how to have fun. Maybe I never was fun?! It was so long ago I cannot be certain. The kiddos kept growing and somehow, I have become trapped in the routine of what I have always done. What I was expected to do.

Now what?

I wait.

I wait for these people to reach new summits with goals surpassed. I wait to be included in where they are going, what they are doing along their journey. Knowing full well that there will be many parts of the lives I once lived for will not include me.

I am going blindly in a direction I was not prepared to go. For all the mistakes I made momming it I think I did ok with the knowledge and resources within my grasp. Some would disagree……

Seven children; a million pieces of me spread near and far. There is no one looking up thinking I can fix it all, quite the opposite. Where there was once trust doubt colours boldly out of the lines. There is no longer a last word the world has other answers besides ol’mom.

Before getting into the shower, I catch reflection of this woman of whom pieces of look familiar. A stranger stare back right through me. Taunting; This is it kid you’ve had your as good as it gets, I’ll wait here to catch you by surprise make you question all the what ifs, pull you in close to see what the years have done. I will grab your hands to trace the lines on a body marked from changing with child. The naivety of youth will be no shelter you know better now. You have learned not to question for fear of answers to heavy to bare. The room fills with heavy steam only to further distort reflection.

The only place I can hang my head and cry without fear of showing vulnerability or weakness is within the confines of a shower only to be confronted by her when I step out. Some days I give her the finger when I walk past other days, I cannot meet her gaze. I always hear her whisper “It is in you”

❤ Leigh
2021