There’s been so much fucking grief, this year.

All I have to do to remember that is come here and scroll. I see the past year in aborted, half-finished openings, cut off unless I click, and so many are frustrated at best. At best, that desperation for satisfaction, for an expectation to just go met for once. At worst, another draft about someone dying.

My dad died, this year. Three friends, too.

My son also started being a person rather than just an extension of my boob. My daughter found her voice and started shouting it. Sometimes that’s bad, and when she shakes with rage, when she descends into the chaos of her personal injustice, I know she’s mine, and I remember that, kiddo, I do. Fuck.

Sorry.

I wrote the best thing I’ve ever written, so far.

Hopefully I’ll say that this time next year, too, though. Hopefully I keep up with this trend, where I keep getting better, keep doing it. I think it’s starting again, now. I’ve started waking up in the middle of the night and needing to type again.

I know I’m supposed to sleep. There are things I have to do, during the day. For the kids, for the husband, the house. For money and for time.

It feels selfish because I know that until I’m writing, it’s just for me that I’m up now, wasting wakefulness on individuality, what the actual fuck.

I’m a mom!! What!! Makes me think!! I get that!!

I’m tired, I tell my husband. The next day, I’m tired. The day after that, I’m tired. He has a strain between his eyes. He has less time than me, he reminds me. I’m tired, I say. He lets out a harsh breath, and speaks without meaning to, yeah, I get it, you can stop saying it, now.

I’m tired.

I’m tired.

I’m tired.

(I need to write. My son laughed and my daughter bellowed and the world is full of service that needs doing, and I need to write. She’s already itching at my fingertips, this next star of my own little world. She already needs me to tell you about her, and a shiver exists in my gut at the notion of that, of her, and her story, and how I get to tell it.)