Yesterday, I got stuck. At the mid point between home and studio, I turned off the road and parked. Unable to decide if I should go forward or back. I sat for two hours, while the rain poured down. I could not work out what I needed. I thought of calling Lifeline, or a friend, I tried to formulate text messages or status updates. I listened and asked inside for clarity. I worked through various options like a game of chess. I got cold.

Poppy was in day care and didn’t need me. Star was going to visit but was unwell. Rose was going to visit but was exhausted and rough and needing alone time. I felt I should go home but was also afraid of conflict and tangles. I felt I should go to the studio but could not make myself travel further away from home.

I came home in the end and tried to sleep. Everyone else slept. A bone deep chill had settled into me, fully clothed beneath blankets I still shivered. I gave up and crept into a deep hot bath, trickling in scorching water until my skin turned pink. The chill finally eased and the paralysis with it.

I often do not know what to say, what I need, what to do. I feel like a puppet who’s strings have been cut. With Poppy I’m purposeful, her needs are clear and straightforward, they sing a song who’s steps I know and believe in. With Rose I’m tangled tangled tangled. I struggle to shake the feeling that I’m destroying my life.

I write text messages and don’t send them. I don’t know what to say. There are no words. I don’t know who to tell. We are so surrounded by love and I am afraid. I try to reach out and find my hand still by my side. Then the moment passes and I can laugh again. My life does not feel so broken and her smile is not full of the ruins of our love. My world flickers between broken and whole. Star drives away for the night and candles gutter out in my heart. Rose does likewise and my anger dies like a wind blown out. I do not understand anything, but walk blindly in fog. Poppy curls up in my lap, wraps her hands around mine. I smell her clean hair, soak in her sweet smile. I have never felt so ill equipped to keep her world bright. Yet I am doing it, following the tides, come what may, cooking, cleaning, cuddling. She animates me. I am hers.

When all the threads unravel the simplicity of story and roles gives shape to the formless and meaning to the obtuse. They hold me like a vase holds water, and I am grateful. The kitchen is clean, the child fed, not all the world is formless chaos. It will not always feel this way.