i've been crying sporadically for the last week (and/ or the last 34 years). i cried when i drove by two very cheerful people holding a sign that said "welcome refugees and immigrants." i cried when this very vulnerable girl got kicked off of the great british baking show. i cried hearing nic in the other room, reassuring melby that it's okay and forever and human just to be sad sometimes. i cried when the cat shit on the bath mat i'd just washed. i cried reading the comments on a yoga video i did on youtube.

i feel pretty emotionally exhausted. like i could eat all the good food and get all the good sleep and do all the good exercise and still my soul just feels like it's been flattened by a tractor. it's not about my body. my guts are tired. my spirit is tired.

i was lamenting it to my confidante and these are the words that came out of me.

i feel so ready to be done with so many parts of it and also so unwilling to let anything go at all.

i feel like i'm concurrently rushing and also trying to freeze time. that makes no sense. it doesn't work. of course it's exhausting.

melby is the most magical beam of light. i, truly unbiased creator of her life, believe that she is a unicorn being. i think her smile twists people's hearts into being forever better. i think she is uniquely inquisitive and thoughtful and perceptive. i think she is often hilariously full of shit. i think her face and body and skin are the embodiment of perfection. i love being with her.

and also sometimes i just want to run away.

i met my girlfriend for coffee this afternoon and realized melby is on the precipice of no longer tolerating sitting in some cafe or bar or restaurant for an extended period of time. because today she just tore through toy after toy and food after food and climbed and sat and stood and clawed and laughed and whimpered and rolled and stood and sat all in the course of seemingly a matter of seconds. and i panicked about how much my life will change as soon as that's really true.

we were driving home and i just wished i could have one of those pre-baby nights where you get one drink and then accidentally stay out til 3 am and eat many different greasy things and talk to people you don't know and then wake up sometime AFTER the sun has risen. i wanted to not think about choosing healthy foods or going to bed at a reasonable hour or making sure there's no animal shit on the bathroom floor.

i want to be able to just leave. leave my child, my responsibilities, my endless reasoning.

and at the same time i'm mourning that some day melby eventually won't breastfeed anymore or find all her comfort in just my body and closeness. i'm mourning how long she is, how she barely fits on the counter anymore and is too busy to really be safe there anyway, how at any moment she's going to crawl, how i wanted her to be able to fall asleep without me and now, horrifyingly, she does.

i want time to pass and i also want it to stop. i want her to be my tiny girl forever and i also want her to not need me 24/7. i want space and i also want endless intimacy. 

i want to be in control but i don't want to think about or plan anything ever again.

it's not even really about melby. it is, but it isn't. she is symptomatic. she is the manifestation of time, whipping by so fast i am in awe of how much i've missed. she is the evidence that i have somehow, ostensibly, become an adult, how i strived for that and sometimes just want to shake off all the knowing.

so i ate a cookie. one cookie.

i sat on the porch and watched the rain. i tried to crawl out of my brain and into the world at hand. my feet felt so heavy on the grainy concrete. what a body, what an incredibly huge weight is just in my brain, all day, every day. it's so much to carry around.

i am racing ahead and also asking time to freeze. it keeps making me cry.