The weight in my chest is the first thing I feel as my tinny alarm jolts me awake. I keep meaning to change it, the alarm, but I doubt it’ll do much about this feeling, this never-ending tiredness that sits in my bones. It’s not that I don’t sleep, it’s that being awake leads to nothing, no hope, no motivation, a constant source of guilt as my children sleep in the next room.
Opening the curtains is all the indication I need to head back to bed, I have no desire to participate in a day that starts with every child on the street intent on kicking the already crumbling wall outside my home, but I have my own children to rouse; ones who, no doubt, are already plotting the newest reasons they can’t possibly get out of bed for college.
So far this week we’ve had: I didn’t sleep, I have a temperature, time of the month and I only have white jeans clean, and my all-time favourite – well I waited for the bus, but honestly Mum it never showed so I’ve just come back home. Sometimes I feel like shaking them, telling them what I’d give to be back in their shoes, finding out what I want to do with my life, but what teenager wants to talk to their mum about wasted time?
Working from home is a blur of cold coffee and data inputting, a job I do not care for but need to keep my family safe, warm, and dry. A damp carpet of leaves stains the pavement a warming russet, a stark contrast with the sky which looms above heavy with the threat of snow. The kids are home, signalled only by grunts and the slamming of doors. I doubt I’ll see them now before I shout them down for tea.
The bulb overhead flickers incessantly, drawing my attention away from my laptop. Rising slowly at first, a fog I hadn’t noticed seeping from the edges of the room warps and festers until my Uncle Marley emerges. His sallow skin hangs limply across his frame, and his usual frown is contorted into a smile, to reveal the few teeth still sitting crooked in his gums.
A totally believable sight if he hadn’t passed last year.
“Sandra, you need to make a change.”
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