I had just gotten home. I was exhausted, in a lot of pain, and completely drained of just about everything needed in order to be a functional adult. However, I decided to go get the mail before I went inside because I’m the only one in my house who ever gets the mail unless someone is expecting something, otherwise it will pile up and look like nobody lives in the property which I’m always paranoid of because I used to live in the hood and I know of all the little things to do to help reduce your property from becoming a target.
It was while I was trudging down my driveway did I see my shadow stretched out to look like a 17-foot slenderman, that I had the thought of how appropriate that visual is, because that’s probably what I should look like based on how much people in the world pull and tug and rely and lean so much on me, despite the fact that I really wish that such wasn’t the case and that everyone around me would just step up and make some fucking decisions on their own without needing me at all sometimes.
I came into my home, and was pretty quickly greeted by my eldest. She welcomed me home, and I could already feel the tears welling up in my eyes. #2 came shortly and by then I was already struggling to hide the fact that I was already crying. My perfect little daughters, sometimes my sole reason for existing, wanting to show me things they drew, crafts they made at school. #1 said to me before I got on the stairs, you should go rest now.
Great idea, I said to her. I went into the bedroom, changed into sleep clothes, and plopped down in bed. I couldn’t really stop crying and I have no idea when I actually fell asleep, but it was a miserable night’s sleep, waking up numerous times due to the pain from what I would eventually discover was a bad ear infection which wasn’t a surprise considering both my kids had it the week prior, in spite of urgent care brushing it off like it was nothing when I went to go see someone about it on my fucking ruined birthday.
Either way, it was about 10 hours in which I was in bed, sleep or not asleep, or whatever I’d call the fugue-like state of bizarre dreams, pain and tossing and turning because of the pain, and it was at around 5 am in which I decided to punt on trying to get any more sleep, and to get up and prepare for the day that I didn’t want to deal with after the one I had just gone through, but life and the passage through time stops for nobody, and I still had my kids to take care of and if I don’t do it pretty much nobody else will, so on with the show all the same.
As is the popular saying these days, I had really crashed out. Ironic a little bit, because I had taken all of Wednesday off of work to spend the day with my dad to deal with a lot of dad stuff in order to not crash out when stacking it on with working remotely, but a crash out still occurred regardless, but not necessarily due to just my dad per say, as much as it was a moment in the day in which I had a number of duties and obligations concurrently swirling over my head, and I succumbed to the feeling of how much pressure there was on me.