2020 Better than Before

their stories that are mine, that are yours. 

We are doing better than before. 

We make loving them our meditation. We reframe often, and make anything our meditation, because we can’t sit still. 

We feel on the verge of a break. We need a break. We take breaks. To breathe. To walk. To write. To floss. We set up routines to save ourselves. We go with the flow. We try to go with their flow, and we are doing better than before. 

We love deeply, and we want to be the best. We still struggle with perfectionism, and we are so hard on ourselves. We have been diagnosed with Postpartum Depression, and we have Anxiety. We have ups and downs. We take medications. We don’t take medications. 

We wish we didn’t need so much to be well. We know we need to talk to someone again but we are ashamed, and we don’t have time. We have old trauma and see our heartache clearer these days. We have new trauma that blur the way we see things. We think. We overthink. We will take two seconds of reacting poorly to them and use it for two weeks to torture ourselves, but we are doing better than before. 

We just need an hour but we don’t ask. We don’t like to mention how hard this is. We feel like we have to work really hard to get time to care for ourselves. We just want two hours and we promise they can have theirs too. We keep score. We count minutes like lifetimes, and wonder how many we’ve wedged between us now. We believe our relationship is stronger than ever, and we are better than before. 

We need to disconnect, to reconnect to ourselves, but we don’t want to be away. We want to get back to ourselves. It is hard to see ourselves outside of who we are to them. We love how it feels to be something else, outside of our home, and we are doing better than before. 

We choose them over us everyday. We question if we have loved enough everyday. We still wait for the breakdowns to show us what we can really carry on our backs, and we really are doing better than before.