I am going to complain for a while. I’m not proud of it. I am blessed.

And I am going crazy!!

When my daughter was born I could barely move. My body had been through a lot, but there was no time to recover.

I had to take care of my daughter.

And people would tell me “just wait until [whatever age their child was]!”

And I wanted to kill them. How dare they tell me there was no end!

There is an end. The muscles used to carry a newborn, that ache relentlessly during those months, they get a break.

Then new muscles, mostly emotional ones, begin to get stressed.

This small person that inserted herself first into my body, then into my sleep time, now injects herself into my quiet time, and drops anchor on any plans I have.

She can’t help it. She resents me too. She fantasizes about a world without parents. Then she remembers that she likes me, so she says I can come too but she is the one in charge.

At the end of the day I am wrung out. She is more tiring than my job, which makes weekends the opposite of relaxing.

I just finished reading Wild by Cheryl Strayed. I remember the long hikes (never backpacking) that I’ve gone on. I remember the 99 switchbacks of Mt. Whitney. Cheryl talks about her hiking experience, how it was not bliss. It was largely and overwhelmingly about putting one foot in front of the other.

I think, I need to get a lot tougher. Yeah, it’s hard to be there for my daughters’ every need. But that’s what this is, this trail I chose.

I read another book, a magical fantasy book where the young man and his wolf had a psychic connection. In this part of the story, they had to chase down and stop some evil that threatened the whole world. They ran and ran, rested briefly and ran. The man was amazed that they could go on so little sleep. The wolf said, you only think you deserve 8 hours sleep; you don’t actually need it.

When I read that, I knew the author was a mother.

What I need and what I deserve are different things. I need to get tougher, and stop pitying myself. I *can* do this. Life is grueling work, but it’s also got a lot of pops of beauty and amazement along the way.

I just have to keep toughing it out to get there.