Sour

I’m amazed at the extremes I feel. Some days I feel like a fucking zombie, incapable of understanding how I’ll ever get my life back, how I’ll ever be able to read the newspaper leisurely with a hot cup of tea, how I’ll ever find time to soothe my soul with yoga or meditation or just curling up to a good book. Is that life over? I ask myself sometimes, terrified at discovering the answer. Should I mourn it and just move on? If so, it seems unfair, like I didn’t really know enough about it before having children. I didn’t know. I didn’t enjoy those lingering conversations at the dinner table with my husband, pouring that extra glass of wine just for fun. I didn’t savor the car ride alone, turning up the music and opening the sunroof. I squandered all the long showers, the cooking experiments, the window shopping, the ability to use my body for any kind of exercise I pleased. I wasted all the time going to the bathroom without worrying he was crying in the other room. I wasted the chance to really understand how much I lived for myself and no one else, and how unfuckingbelievably pleasurable that was – no shame in that. It was just lovely.

- Alexis, Madrid, Spain, teacher/writer