Falling Slowly

I don't ever remember making a choice, work over family. I'm not sure I ever did. Since I returned to work in April, the quotidian has been worse than tedious; it has been hard. Really hard. And though I wasn't crying about it most weekends anymore, as I had in the beginning, it has taken a serious toll.

"I just need to know," I would say. "If I'm supposed to just keep working, head down, I can do that. It's only through September. It will be a terrible couple months, but I can do it."

I don't think I ever knew what I would want. I remember, before kids, sitting at a baseball game with a friend whose husband is a lawyer speculating whether I'd be cut out for stay-at-home-motherhood.

"We're just lucky we get the choice," she said quietly. She has an advanced degree and, at least for now, stays home with her twin nearly two-year-olds full time. I am not sure why I thought I'd have the choice.

So far, it's been a non issue. I am blessed to have much higher earning potential than I would have guessed back then, and we need my income. It's expensive to live where we do, and we are effectively stuck with the real estate choices we made five years ago. And it's not that I'm complaining, more just explaining what brought us here.

But it would be disingenuous to pretend I hate working because I don't. Particularly over the last year, I have enjoyed the growth, the increased responsibility and recognition and the path that appeared to be opening for me. People who mattered stuck their necks out for me. I stuck my neck out for me. And I netted a job that I care about and that people count on, and that means being constantly tethered and sometimes working more than full time. So after reluctantly taking another leadership role this summer, I wrestled with knowing if and when to draw the line. I didn't feel any sort of peace about saying no. I needed something more to go on than general malaise. I mentioned this often to friends, The Boy, and family.

The week before it happened was the worst. My new sister-in-law picked up the kids so I could stay at work a couple extra hours. By the time I got them they were fed, so I spent 3o minutes with them in the car and put them to bed when we got home. Then I worked on my laptop, pumped late into the evening (I am, miraculously, still breastfeeding), and went to bed after The Boy was asleep. I was exhausted; I had nothing left. We fought. There was just no give.

Which brings us to August 1st, and the fall that changed everything.