Prompt: “Take a subject that is hard for you to talk about and write about it slowly.”

I found this old prompt I wrote to back in December of 2014, and when I re-read it I got just as sad today as I did then.

Hard Stuff

The hard stuff is hard. Feeling feelings is hard. Wanting to do something like write a book but never doing it is deeply sad but I still don’t do it. OK, I’m going to try to go slow. Last week, I had this shame-spiral thing where I told these other moms that I hated cooking and cleaning. And children. I didn’t say “Just kidding” because I thought it was implied. Or I wouldn’t be volunteering with these dumb ass moms or wearing this dorky apron while attempting to cook rice for a class full of fourth graders.

I don’t actually hate them. I just sometimes do like when they are whining or fighting or not eating what I cook or cutting up paper into tiny pieces and leaving it for me to clean up.

One of the other mom’s said, “Wow, mothering must be very hard for you.” And my glib self wanted to laugh maniacally. Yes it is. But my slowed-down self would have to answer in a weird way that tapped into loneliness, my seven-year-old self hanging out at my friend Tammy’s house when she slammed her finger in the door and cried that kind of quiet, red-faced kid cry you get when something is broken.

And her mom said, “Breathe young lady or I’ll blister your bottom.” The word bottom felt perverse. And really, unfair. Then her mom chastised her brother for putting on his pajamas while his back was still wet from the bath so the fabric rolled up like one of those Roman shades featured in do it yourself living room makeover magazines.

Why this moment flashes in my mind with an equal sign next to the word loneliness, I’m not sure.

Maybe no one cared enough about my breathing patterns or the wetness of my backside, but somehow it ties into the sometimes crushing weight of mothering and mothering ourselves.

Mothering must be really hard for you.