This won’t take long

We are drowning in words, I know. I’m tired before the first one.

I

Won’t

Take

Long.

S. O. S.

••• - - - •••

That’s the entire message.

Distress.

It was going to be longer

But my son refused to listen. Again. On repeat, since he woke me from a dead sleep at 5:20 AM this morning (now yesterday morning, I couldn’t find the time to finish this). Almost everything has been a fight.

Maybe it’s the new school, this week was his first week of kindergarten. This was a big change from the neighborhood, day care that never has more than eight children at a time. He’d been going to that since he was two.

I had to invest all my energy and attention, on my “day off,” in regulating, holding boundaries, and listening to the incessant noise of a dysregulated five-year-old.

That takes more than I have left. I’m paying for it. I’ve been paying for it. For years. In headaches, in physical, emotional, and mental exhaustion. In a nonexistent social life. In chronic stress, in anxiety, in pounds gained over the last five years.

In bills that outrun any amount of hours I work or side hustles I stack.

I’ll spend my other day off doing it all again (I did.)

Then back to work, sales, where performance and appearance, attention and care, are required. Again. On demand. For full-grown adults. Adults also looking for attention, for care.

So distress.

Relief is needed, desperately.

Time. Care. To have the bandwidth to be the parent my children deserve, to have the dignity of me counting.

Not money. Living. Relating. Being.

Why is this the thing we’ve made unaffordable while claiming it as a zero on the books?

—Anthony

PS. Look around you. Really look around you. The people who most need your support rarely ask for it.

The absence of their voices is proportionate to the burden. Rallies and movements, fundraisers and campaigns are for those who have the luxury of time and energy.

An S. O. S. is the last resort, after every attempt has been made to repair the ship. So don’t ask us if we’ve tried x or y.

Don’t tell us that this is what we signed up for — no one signs up for being abandoned by a culture for raising its future.

Don’t tell us it will pay off one day — that’s not why we raise new humans.

Don’t tell us at least we will be cared for when we are older. Look around: care for family and loved ones is booked at zero on the culture’s ledger and as loss on ours. The incentive is to care for whoever can afford it.

Help.

S. O. S. We are drowning.

That’s the message.