The last couple of days have been amazing, temperature-wise, where I live. In the high 60s and low 70s — my favorite!
We had some massively high winds to go with it yesterday, and some extreme rain bursts, but I’ll take that any day over the freezing temperatures that this time of year often has, temperatures that feel like it’ll make icicles fall out of your nose.
My youngest and I drag to school every morning at the last possible second because she doesn’t want to be there, and I don’t want her there either, but when the weather is nicer, it does make it easier on both of us to get our butts in gear.
Going outside is way more palatable when you don’t have to race to the car to keep from getting frostbite. (I like to exaggerate — sorry.)
She’s required to be in her classroom at 8:20, so as usual, I was dropping her off at the front doors at 8:15, just enough time to hurry to class and not be counted as tardy.
Perfect.
As I was about to pull out of the school’s parking lot, my sister-in-law (my hubster’s brother’s wife) texted me and asked if I could take some medicine to my nephew’s day care.
She’s a working mom — at least 40 hours outside the home every week — and leaving work to take it to him herself would mean using one of her vacation days or sick days. Since I work from home, most of which is freelance and at least somewhat flexible, she was hoping I could manage to get over there.
My nephew is 19 months old and had to have an eye exam yesterday. Fairly serious vision issues run in Mom’s side of the family, so he had to have his eyes dilated and the whole nine yards.
Today, he has a headache, and the day care staff members are not allowed to administer medicine.
So, off Auntie Lissa rushed to take him some Tylenol and administer the dose so that his head can stop hurting.
I kept this baby with me for the first year of his life (once Mom returned to work). He was with me from 5:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. each weekday, so this is my baby too, hardcore. Even if I didn’t believe strongly that family should show up in any way they can, this kiddo holds a special place in my heart, and there is no way I could sit here and get any work done while worrying he is suffering through a bad headache at day care.
This past summer, I finally had to admit that I couldn’t keep up with my work and taking care of him. I work because we need my income, and we were taking a massive hit financially. I cried so much. I couldn’t stand the thought of him being in day care, but I have to take care of my own kids, which requires money.
She found a really great day care, and he has made a lot of friends since he started there, but days like today make me feel so guilty that I wasn’t able to continue keeping him here with me.
His day care is over thirty minutes from my house, and even farther from my daughter’s school, so it was over an hour before I was able to give him the medicine, and then, of course, you have to wait for it to kick in.
Had he been here with me, I would have been able to help him so much sooner.
I worked through my youngest daughter’s toddlerhood and managed to keep up with editing, then juggled and managed when my brother’s youngest daughter had to move in with me with no notice for a while when my youngest was four.
My brother’s youngest started kindergarten while living at my house the same year my oldest started middle school and all of the horror show that comes with that life chapter for kids.
I have juggled helping my parents as their health declined, running my own business from home with a baby and then a toddler with me on a full-time basis, taking my oldest to and picking her up from school every day in between editing and toddler mom duties, helping my husband with payroll and other paperwork for the business he launched when my youngest was five, moving my brother and his daughter both in with me that same year and watching her for him while he worked, and on and on and on.
I worked up to 80 hours per week when I was first launching my business, building relationships with clients, so that they knew they mattered to me, that I understood how much work had gone into these manuscripts they were trusting me to take care of properly.
While breastfeeding and then weaning and all of the things in the above list, and it goes on and on.
Was it easy?
No. Never.
But I could manage.
I made it work.
I wanted to be present and available and to make people feel seen and loved. I wanted them to know that they mattered.
More than anything, I wanted to make sure I wasn’t making anyone feel less than.
But after my brother died by suicide in the summer of 2021, something inside of me shifted that feels impossible to put right again.
I am literally not capable of keeping up with as many things as I used to be.
Juggling everything people ask of me no longer feels possible.
The ways that I was steady feel all wobbly now, and I hate that, because showing up for people matters to me, and I always feel like I’m letting them down now.
Some days, it’s all I can do to remember to eat during the day.
Some days, I don’t even want to get out of bed. (I always had a lot of days like that, but I was able to push past it and do it anyway.) It literally feels impossible to drag through my days.
I hate being this new person.
I miss the me who could push through the dark days with more success.
I miss the person I had built in myself, despite all the ways that I never felt good enough and all the demons I was running from.
But the biggest ball I juggled in my life — being there for the people who matter most to me — could not have been dropped in a more fantastically, drastically horrible way than for my brother to take his own life.
I know it wasn’t about me.
But making my heart accept that is impossible.
He needed me, and I let him down.
My nephew’s mother just texted to let me know the day care staff told her he is feeling much better, and she appreciates me running the medicine over to him.
I am so glad it helped.
But still, I’m left with this ache in my stomach, feeling like I let this baby down.
I know I need to keep putting the work into myself that helps me see past things like that.
I am doing the best that I can, and I do know that it’s okay that my best is not the same as it used to be.
But when his little arms were wrapped around my neck and he cried for me when I had to leave, it broke my heart, and that is hard to see past.
I am trying hard to focus on the fact that his head feels better and that I did show up for him in the way that I am able to.
And I am loving the sunshine I see outside my window as I type this out.
One day at a time.
One hour at a time.
One minute at a time.
All any of us can do is our very best, and that means different things in different life chapters.
Peace and love, y’all. 
©Melissa Gray, 2023
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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