All the times you said you were Fine

The alarm had not gone off yet and you were already counting. The packed lunches, the form that needs signing, the thing you promised your mother, the meeting at ten.

You lay there for one more minute, and even that felt like stealing.

I want you to know that this kind of tired is not laziness, and it is not weakness. It is what happens when one person does the remembering for a whole household, year after year, without a day off from her own head.

You got up anyway. You always do. But getting up anyway is not proof that you are fine. It is only proof of how much you love them.

You pulled up outside your own house and switched off the engine, and you did not get out.

For a few minutes you just sat there with your hands on the wheel. Then it came, the way it does when you finally stop moving.

You wiped your face. You checked the mirror. You picked up the shopping and went in smiling, and nobody inside ever knew.

I know. I know about the car. So many women know about the car.

It is the only room you have where nobody needs anything from you. That is not a sign that you are breaking. It is a sign that you need more rooms like it.

He was right there on the other end of the sofa. The television was on. From the outside it looked like a perfectly ordinary evening.

But you had something heavy in your chest, and he did not look up, and you did not know how to begin.

There is a loneliness that only happens next to another person. It is worse than being on your own, because it makes you wonder whether you are asking for too much.

You are not. Wanting to be asked how you are is not too much. It is the least that love can do.

He may not know how far away you feel. Tell him plainly, and kindly. I miss you, and I am sitting right here.

You heard your own voice and did not recognise it. Then you saw their faces, and you shut yourself in the bathroom and sat on the edge of the bath with your hand over your mouth.

You think a good mother would never do that. But a good mother is exactly who sits on the edge of the bath feeling this terrible. The ones who do not care do not cry about it.

Go back out. Get down to their height. Say, I am sorry I shouted. I was tired, and it was not your fault.

That is not a failure. That is one of the most useful things you will ever teach them. People who love you can get it wrong, and then come back and mend it.

There was no announcement. One afternoon you were cutting up your mother’s food without thinking, and you realised the two of you had quietly swapped places.

She used to check you had your coat. Now you check she has taken her tablets. She used to wait up for you. Now you lie awake listening for the phone.

It is one of the strangest sorrows there is, because the person is still here and you are already missing her.

You are doing a loving, difficult thing. You will not do it perfectly. Nobody does.

On the hard days, remember that she did all of this for you once, and she did not do it perfectly either. You turned out loved.

Those lights were not designed by anyone who likes women. You stood there in a dress that looked lovely on the hanger, and all you could see was everything you have been taught to dislike.

You put your own clothes back on quickly and left without buying anything, feeling smaller than when you came in.

That was not the truth about you. That was one bad mirror and thirty years of being told what a body ought to look like.

The people who love you do not see you the way that mirror did. They see your face when you laugh. They see who walks into the room.

Go back another day. Take the bigger size. Buy the dress that fits the woman you actually are.

You heard yourself say, of course, no problem. And even as the words left your mouth, your stomach sank, because it was a problem. It was your only free evening.

You have always been like this. You would rather be exhausted than have someone think badly of you for a single afternoon.

But every yes you do not mean is paid for by somebody. Usually it is you. Sometimes it is your family, who get the tired and snappy version of you afterwards.

No is not unkind. No is simply information about what you have left.

Try a gentle one this week. I would love to, but I cannot this time. Then stop talking. You do not owe anyone a list of reasons.

The house is asleep and you are wide awake, going round the same track. The thing you said in 2011. The lump you ought to get checked. The money. The children. What will happen to your parents.

At three in the morning every problem is enormous and every solution is out of reach. That is not because the problems are worse than you thought. It is because a tired brain in the dark tells lies.

Nothing you decide at this hour will be right, so decide nothing.

Keep a notebook by the bed. Write the worry down and tell it, I will deal with you at ten. Then put your hand on your chest and breathe slowly.

Morning makes everything smaller. It always has.