Tired Mom Diary – Epilogue – Hello

I have sat across a boardroom table from a man who called me “sweetheart” twice, and I made him pay for both in the contract. I have fired people I liked. I kept a department alive through two restructures and a CFO who thought Excel was a personality. I had my daughter at thirty-nine, which the doctors kept calling a geriatric pregnancy, as if they were complimenting my wine collection. I remember thinking, with a confidence I would now like to return for store credit: I’ve done hard things.

I love my daughter. I need to say that clearly, because the internet is full of women who hate their lives in tasteful fonts, and I’m not one of them. I love her in a way that is frankly unprofessional. I love my husband, who is funny and good with his hands and not an idiot, whatever this diary is going to imply about him.

People get one thing wrong about women who have babies late. They think we waited. We didn’t wait. We were busy. I had a job where people were a little afraid of me. I had opinions about hotel pillows. I once flew to Toronto for a single meeting and fell asleep on the plane home with my shoes off and a glass of wine I didn’t have to share. I don’t remember feeling happy, exactly.

I remember feeling finished.

I thought motherhood would be another difficult project. Worse hours. Worse pay. A stakeholder who throws up on you. Fine. I knew how to do difficult projects.

I hadn’t understood that projects end.

THINGS I DID TODAY

Found the permission form. It was in the backpack, under a banana, which was also in the backpack.

Ran a client call that three senior people had been avoiding since July. They agreed to everything. One of them thanked me.

Answered “where is the” nine times. Once, the thing was in the person’s hand.

Got a text asking where the mittens are. It’s September.

Reheated the same coffee four times. Drank none of it.

Tonight, when the house finally went quiet, I sat down at the kitchen table and tried to name one thing I did today that was only mine.

Not for my daughter. Not for my husband. Not for work, or my mother, or his. Not for the house, which as far as I can tell is also a person, and the neediest one.

Just mine.

I got as far as the coffee. I’d made it for both of us.

So I tried yesterday. Then last week. I went back through the whole month like I was looking for a receipt, and everything I found belonged to somebody. The showers had someone knocking. The sleep had someone standing silently beside the bed at 2:14 a.m., which is apparently how six-year-olds ask for water. 

I’m forty-six years old, and I can’t remember the last time I did something that belonged only to me.

So I bought this notebook. A woman at work said journaling helps. I said I didn’t have time. She said that was sort of the point.

This diary is the only thing in this house nobody else has touched.

Every Saturday I’m going to write down the week. Not the highlights. The week. The school emails at 8:47 p.m. The things I get asked while people are holding their phones. The things I’m very, very good at, which is most of them.

Maybe by Christmas I’ll be able to find the day I disappeared.

I have a terrible feeling there wasn’t one.