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A Rambling Mom - Prologue 1 |
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(TW: Cussing, Suggestive Language, Depression, Imposter Syndrome)
She sat in front of her husband’s laptop, staring blankly into the haunting white glow of a completely empty document page. Her fingertips hovered patiently over the keys, aching to start punching away but nothing ever came to mind. Much like the empty lines before her, Erica’s mind was a total slate of nothingness. During the day ideas would come and go. Fleeting little things. Grand tabletop stories that would never come to full bloom within a group ever again. Webcomic ideas she simply didn’t have the time to sketch out, ink, colorize and publish into her long abandoned blog. And forget about that novel she had been trying to write for years before even having children.
At this point, the pen name attached to all her social media accounts were a cruel joke at best. Erica was an imposter, moonlighting as something other than a stay-at-home mother during her free time. “Free time,” is also a joke - feel free to laugh. (That was a lie, don’t laugh.) She knew she didn’t have the right to complain. Her own mother was a single mom for the majority of her mothering career. She went to school and got her degree in medical billing. She got the kids loaded into her van and took them to school herself every day. She wrote lovely notes for the lunch boxes and created magic for holidays. She worked every day and twice as hard on days when she was sick. She didn’t have a man to fall back on.
Once upon a time, Erica considered her own mother to be just another flawed human being like every other woman on the face of the earth. Now the concept of her mother felt alien to her. Here Erica was, five years into doing the stay at home thing, and experiencing “burnout.” Her husband was working his a** off in a warehouse just about every night of the week for twelve hours straight and more on holidays. Husband never complained, he very much was the good sort of man who was always compassionately understanding of his useless wife’s disposition. Always an empath, Erica’s mother never criticized her. She didn’t understand it, but she didn’t disapprove either. Not that she needed their criticisms, there was a cacophony of noise that had followed her from the day they breathed her intention of being a stay-at-home mother. A strange and beautiful bouquet of toxic positivity and outright doubt or pity.
“If you can afford it, do it. Must be nice.”
“I wish I could spend more time with my kids, I think being a stay-at-home mother must be a real gift. Cherish it while you can.”
“Weren’t you a feminist? Having a family really set you back to the dark ages, huh?”
None of these things is true, she would find out. Rude, but certainly not the truth. The fact is that her family couldn't exist without their plan of her being a SAHM for the first six years of her kids' lives. The financial burden of daycare and preschool programs just wasn’t feasible at the time that their first was born and even less so with an unplanned second. And of course she loved spending the days with her kids, coloring in books, doing kid yoga, and singing songs. And sure, there was a lot less time (read: no time at all) for actively being on the picket lines fighting in favor of women’s bodily rights and the like.
It was also true that she was completely sick of being touched by anyone and starving for adult human interaction. What wouldn’t she give to have a few less bruises from being kicked for the millionth time during a full on duo toddler melt down over the color of their cups being wrong or not wanting to go to pre-k for two whole hours? Her mouth salivated over the thought of using her tongue to connect together strings of words that had nothing to do with Cocomelon, Blippi, or dino chicken nuggets. And just the thought of actually being heard without receiving the well-rehearsed, lazily drawn out, “Uh-huh… Sounds about right,” from her exhausted husband was enough to cream her jeans over.
If it were within her power, she’d be making amateur wordporn hotlines geared toward angry mothers who were just as desperate as her to cuss unrelentingly. She could hear the late night ads now. A man with a low, husky voice saying something to the effect of, “Are you a mother desperate for a good ‘********?’ Does the idea of feeling ‘d**k’ in your mouth really get you going? Welcome to Words Gone Wild, join me for a 30 day free trial and swear to your heart's content with stay-at-home parents in your area. Cuss so much, you’ll make sailors blush.”
The thought, “Progressive enough for you, b***h?” instantly came to mind while Erica’s imagination ran wild with this fantastical plan to reclaim her barely raunchy past life in verbal form.
If only she could think of something intellectual to write in these quiet, dark moments of the night. Kids asleep. Husband at work. Chores ignored. These minutes were all hers for the taking and yet her imagination failed her - time and time again. The only thing she would successfully do is waste her precious time tanning in the incandescent glow until her eyes ached. Then, her hands would move automatically. Reaching for the edge of the screen and snapping the laptop shut with a painfully dissatisfied ‘click,’ before heading to bed.
Aage Raghnall · Fri Jan 19, 2024 @ 03:40am · 0 Comments |
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