A Profound Kind of Tired

 I don’t know if I’m going to make it. It could be early onset dementia or something wrong with my thyroid or that Lyme disease I was diagnosed with finally expressing itself or the effects of 5G. I can’t think of words. I’ll be in the middle of a conversation and mid-sentence my brain will be wiped clean. It’s so frustrating! I worry my mind is going. 

But then there are the hot flashes, and my hair is falling out. It’s gotten hard to keep weight off. My patience is thin. My periods are becoming irregular, and I’ve got an inexplicable UTI. 

I don’t think it’s dementia. I think I’m beginning to go through what a girl goes through on the other end of the spectrum from adolescence. I became a woman, like a butterfly coming out of a cocoon. Now I’m becoming…whatever a woman becomes after that. Last night, a typical night, I fell asleep with my two-year-old, whom I’m still nursing, crept sometime past midnight into my own bed only to wake up around four to clean up an accident and welcome the four-year-old culprit in beside me. I’m imbibing a perimenopausal-sleep deprivation cocktail. We snoozed together on the pillow in warm proximity.

I have eight children! I can’t believe it. They just came, one after the other at the (I found sustainable) pace of twenty-something months apart. I had my first when I was almost 29. And now here I am, having been running this marathon for seventeen years. Solid little baby flesh in my arms, at my breast, in my space, mewing, screeching, squealing, screaming, laughing, yelling, running, climbing, tumbling all around me, all this time, without a stop, and every twenty-something months, a new one came, solid and warm on my chest. Always before, when I had a two-year-old, I was expecting the next one, or already had her (or him.) Here I am with a two-year-old but not expecting. It’s possible I won’t expect a new one again. I do see my reflection in the mirror, tired breasts, soft belly, whiteness around my temples, age spots in my hairline. I see what a woman becomes when she’s done being the thing she turned into. She becomes an old woman.

I’m not ready. There is still softness in this bosom. There is still beauty on these cheeks, there beside the eyes, when I turn my face to the side. There is still some sap in the tree. I would welcome another little one with ecstatic joy. What divine largesse to be given nine. But there are grooves on my face that never disappear, and the skin is loose on my neck. I’m creeping up to bed now. Number eight is emitting sweet breaths on her pillow, and number seven has her pull-up on. I’ll try to get some sleep. The marathon is far from over, anyway.