Help Wanted

I need help. 

No wait, I don’t need help. I just want it. I want it a lot.

I want someone to be home with my kids in the afternoons between when school lets out and when their dad picks them up or I get home. That person, ideally, would prepare them a healthy enough snack and maybe they came an hour early to fold all my clean laundry. Scratch that…they’d need two hours. My kids would eat less crackers directly from the box and more fruit. All three of them would sit at the kitchen table and complete homework so evenings would be mostly free to be a family. 

And maybe this helper of me would also want to grocery shop once or twice a week. Maybe they’d even want to start and or make dinner once or twice a week.

Maybe they are also a masseuse. Or a therapist. A massaging therapist! 

Who brings me flowers and wine. Who wants to pet my hair when the day is rough. Who is shaped like a hug and wants to drink coffee on the porch with me in the mornings. 

What I want is a mom or a wife or a nanny or a husband or a boyfriend or I don’t even know what. 

But it doesn’t matter.

Because help isn’t coming and I’m in this alone. 

I’m drowning and I don’t know what to do. I’ve had so very much help in my life. Not the aforementioned wants, but help I’ve had. I’m so grateful for every atta girl when I’ve chosen a new risk and lept. I’m thankful for every butt in every chair of my house concerts or my Rotary club or my restaurants (Not that those last two are actually mine. But they’re mine enough.) I’m thrilled my community rallied to pay my school tuition and thrilled I have friends all over Oklahoma City and the country loving me with their well wishes.

But. (and isn’t there always one?)

I come home and at least 1/2 of the time, it’s just me. And everything is right where I left it. 100% of the time I come home something desperately needs my attention. A book or a laundry pile or a dog that needs a walk because I rescued a dog a year ago even though we have no yard and ohmygodI’mfuckingoverwalkingthisdog. Waiting on me are unstarted and unfinished art projects and home improvement projects and my tenants need a new lease and I haven’t booked my January show and for the love of christ, please don’t pitch me your band this week, please. I have instruments I haven’t learned and songs I haven’t sung and muffins I haven’t baked because Tanner loves muffins and now I’m a horrible, muffin depriving mother. On top of the terrible mother who absolutely can’t inspire her daughter to study Spanish and what if she fails and what if I have to hire a tutor and where will this tutoring take place because my schedule is stacked and my coparent pretty much avoids me at all costs and the only good ideas are his ideas but I haven’t really seen any Spanish ideas out of him yet and it’s been months and…..I need help.