Sadness

I've been meaning for some time to write about a typical day. I've noticed that so few of my friends, family members, and acquaintances have any concept of what my life is like. The ones who aren't parents don't understand what it's like to be one, and the ones who are parents but have partners don't know what it's like to be a single parent. The single parents I do know, primarily, have ex-partners who still help out, or extended family members who take on some of the parental roles and responsibilities. Almost all of them have well-paying jobs (or at least jobs that pay a living wage); the few single parents I know who really struggle financially are all young, uneducated, and just starting out.

I'm in a kind of odd situation in that, while I have some things in common with a lot of people, I don't know anyone else who simultaneously is single, a parent, highly intelligent and educated, working full-time but still very poor, and (for all practical purposes) alone.

I've been trying to figure out a way to express what an average day for me is like: what it's like to wake up at 6:30 a.m., to get a highly inattentive and disorganized child ready for school, to meet with child's teacher, to pay bills and do grocery shopping and do laundry, to go to work and work very hard on my feet while supervising and organizing and coordinating employees (who may or may not show up), to pick up my child after 11:00 p.m. and drive home, feed the dog, get clothes and food ready for the next day, look over my son's homework, and try to tidy a bit before collapsing in bed at about 12:30 a.m., knowing I have to be up early again in the morning.

And it's not just that I do these things on a normal basis (which I do). I'm also doing them when I'm sick or tired, when the dog has figured out how to jump the fence and started wandering the neighborhood, when my son has been up half the night vomiting and I've had to change the sheets twice, when I've had a hard day at work, when I'm overdrawn at the bank and don't have groceries to last till payday, when I'm exhausted or moving or have been injured or have to schedule five appointments in a week for doctor 's visits or therapy. I do these things when (after three months of physical therapy) I still can't lift a one-pound weight without pain, when my heart is broken, when my friends aren't talking to me, when my son is acting out at school and collapsing in tears at night, when I haven't had time for lunch or dinner, when I'm in the process of moving across town, when my ex is harassing me, when I work an eleven-hour shift with half my employees missing, when people I love are ill or in the hospital, when a friend's ex-girlfriend is threatening suicide because he and I went to dinner.

That's the thing right there: the more I tried to describe a typical day, the more I realized that there is no typical day. The only consistency in my life is that I do what I have to do, the best that I can, with as much kindness and grace as I can muster, day in and day out, whether I have help or not.

I'm not very good at sharing personal things. In fact, I almost never do. And even when I do, I always hold back. I don't trust easily or deeply, and seldom for long. But I've been working on this. I've been forcing myself to talk to people about things I never would have otherwise, trying to be open and authentic. Unfortunately, this hasn't necessarily paid off. But I hear it's a good thing to do, so, in the spirit of that, here are a few confessions about today:

I have nearly run off the road or had collisions several times this month due to sheer exhaustion. Today a car stopped suddenly in front of me and I barely managed not to rear-end it. I'm sore all over and was a little shaky, but I still went on to work and didn't even mention it to anyone.

I've been trying to catch up on my Oscar movie viewing. I rented Lincoln from Redbox over a week ago. I still haven't watched it. I feel guilty about the cost of keeping it for so long, but I still don't know when I'll find time to watch it.

I've recently received some completely unsolicited, out-of-touch advice from well-intentioned people who don't know enough about my situation to be helpful. Even though I'm feeling disrespected and annoyed, I still interact with these people because they feel like the closest thing to friends I have.

Tonight, when I got off work, I was so exhausted I nearly cried. Then I checked Facebook and saw that someone had posted pictures from a birthday party. Instead of being happy for her, all I could think of is that I have never really had a party, never had the kind of friends and family who would take me out for my birthday. I suddenly felt very lonely.

This deeply lonely feeling is new to me. I guess I never really expected anything different, so it didn't bother me much. But for a while I had a small glimpse of what it might be like to be that kind of person, to be someone for whom things like birthday parties and meals out with friends were a normal and expected part of life. And I felt like I was missing something important, one of those things that other people may take for granted, but still somehow seem to value. And I also realized that I not only have never been one of those people, but I probably never will be.

So, here on what is, for me, a typically atypical day, I feel an unexpected sadness. Not because I'm tired or alone, because I'm used to that. But because I think I'm always going to be tired and alone, and it's just occurred to me that maybe I don't want to be.