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Day 13: Giving Up

I did not want to get out of bed today.

Everything felt grey and numb and lifeless, and I couldn’t even remember how to begin being human. Laying there on my mattress, I thought of how last week that I’d woken up and done yoga and gone running and kicked ass all day. It felt like a distant memory, stuff that some superhero version of me had done once upon a time. Those days were clearly behind me.

I dragged my carcass upright, poured coffee in my mouth hole, managed to find clean clothes for the boys, and headed off toward school.

The little one was bawling over something ridiculous, my coffee hadn’t kicked in, and Taylor Swift just wasn’t cutting it this morning. I looked at the grey sky and the traffic on the road in front of me and thought,

“Can I quit now?”

It wasn’t yet 8:00 a.m.

///

I did not want to write today either.

We’re almost halfway through this 31 day challenge (I hope? I don’t want to do the math) and I feel like October is going to last forever. The first few days I wrote really good stuff I was quite proud of; the past two days I’ve penned incoherent ramblings about Taylor Swift.

This is not a promising trajectory.

At this point in the process, I grimace every time I pull up a blank screen to start writing:

“Hello, my nemesis. We meet again.”

Can I quit now?

///

I didn’t give up today.

The sky turned blue around lunchtime and the little one came home from school all smiles. We walked to the park and played on the swings and did chin-ups on the monkeybars.

I remembered what it felt like to notice the leaves and the fresh air and these moments I get to share with my boy. I drank another cup of coffee.

And now, I wrote too.

I wanted to give up, but I didn’t.

And I’m glad.


During the month of October, I’m joining the Write31Days challenge to talk about 31 Days of Becoming Human. Click here to read all posts in the series

published October 13, 2015

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