...try again tomorrow...

 Words on the page.
That's how simple it should be.
But for...reasons...both vast and vapid, I've found it impossible to
Just Start.

I can count a million false starts...scribbled notes and spooling text docs...even good intentions dressed up as titled drafts...but still that blinking cursor taunts me.

There are, it seems, both too many words and too few words all at the same time...clamoring for attention and chiding me into silence. 

Words have weight.  And of late, I haven't wanted to bear that weight. I've been terrified of that weight...that added weight that would surely break me.

This season of life has been the undoing of me.
I am, as I have been since March 2020, a breath away from unraveling.
Every day is a study in controlled chaos and contained disaster. 

Every day is a failure.

I'm behind on everything.  I'm overwhelmed in every area.  I'm not so much drowning in the waves, as compressed by all the pressure...compressed down and down and down until there's nothing left of me.

Insomnia is my nightly companion again.  2a.m. is silent and empty of need...empty enough to plan the next strategy and steel my resolve, silent enough to hear the echoes of who I was.

I'm surrounded by need.

A partner who needs constant correction to steady his course of sobriety and effect responsible decision making. A young adult who needs inspiration and redirection and organization and (life skills, self-care skills, mental/emotional, big life choice) support. A toddler who needs creative solutions to strengthen his areas of deficit, and patience as he learns by failing, and non-verbal translation and comfort-nursing, and immediate gratification.
Step-children who need far more of me than they are getting.
Extended family members who need my presence and my skill sets. 
Friends who need me to show up.
Big life things that need my time and my voice and my resources and my energy.

And somewhere deep down under all that need is me...needing to just sleep and recover and rebuild.

I hate this part of my story.
I hate the mess of it.  The ugliness of it. The overwhelm and the panic and the rage of it.
Oh, I hate it.
I hate how I feel like I'm scrambling on loose gravel.
I hate how I'm failing everyone.

2a.m. is dark and lonely and empty.

Its silence holds a mirror up to my every day and finds the fault.

2a.m. is my guidepost.

My challenger.

My "try again tomorrow".

And so I will...