Spinning

Wake up early. Drive there. Teach. Drive there. Teach. Head home. Quickly eat. Drive there. Teach. Drive home. Prepare lessons for the next day. Head hurts. The world is spinning. I lay down, but know I must get up again. No time for sleep. Ten minutes and I'm up. I sit at the computer, answering unanswerable emails. I field the angry phone calls about small children and fancy liquor. I enter grades. I can't stop now. Lesson plans. Assignment sheets. The small piles of ungraded papers.

The doctor's appointments. The new, additional restrictions to our diet. The medical bills I can't stand to look at piling up on the table. The phantom pain. It's not there, but it's only a matter of time. Plead with my body - just hold out for one more week.

Two issues of Sports Illustrated sit unread on the table. Two weeks of laundry piled in the closet. My head is now pounding. The trash needs to be taken out. The recycling is piled up by the door and I know the resident managers are going to yell at us soon. Did I update the registry to include an ice cream scoop? The phone rings. Crisis elsewhere. What can I do from here? Flowers? Music? I don't know. Why can't someone else answer these questions?

Thank you notes pile up. I can't bear to look at them. The gifts are piled up in the corner. We need to do something with them. People will be in town tonight, but I am working until 9. The floor hasn't been swept in weeks. The bathroom has a starring role in my nightmares, what with its filthy bathtub and hair filled drains. The refrigerator is empty. There's no yogurt, no cheese, no milk. There's not a piece of fresh fruit in the house. Empty cardboard boxes line the walls. Someone please come and organize our house.

It is past midnight. I crawl into bed. I am physically and mentally exhausted. I can't sleep. I lay in the silence, waiting for the blessed sleep. The dream comes again. I know I am crying. I want it to stop. Make the dreams stop. But when I wake up, I want the dreams again. I look over and see him sleeping. I love him. I am envious of his sleep. I start awake, again and again. The dreams. I reach for him, but he is unreachable.

The tension has moved from my jaw to my shoulders to my upper arms. I am like the tin man, unable to move. Someone please oil me. I wake up as the alarm goes off at 7:00 am on a Saturday. I jump out of bed because I know if I lay there and think about the coming day, I will not make it out of bed. The pain is tremendous. I want to be happy. I can't. I can't. I can't do this anymore.