Look Out!!

Today I was uncomfortably close to hitting a tree with my moving vehicle… my moving vehicle with myself and my son inside of it. My parent’s move in the middle of nowhere, and there is no fast way to get anywhere from their house. Since moving there I’ve had to push up our leaving the house time by at least 45 minutes, an hour if I’m being realistic about being on time. I have to drop C. off at my mother-in-law’s house (she watches him in the day) and then go on to work. But this is after I have already driven a good forty five minutes in the inky blackness of early morning. And I have been having SUCH a hard time keeping my eyes open, and today it just got away from me I guess, because I realized that I had run up over a curb and was pointed right in the direction of a tree. Do you know that initial rush of complete and utter panic you feel when you know in a split second something horrible is going to happen? If you don’t, I hope you never do. To me it happens almost like a jolt, like a lightning bolt zapped me out of the blue. In that split second I was able to yank the steering wheel to the right and make it back over to the road, narrowly missing that tree. C. piped up, “What happened?” in the back seat, and I couldn’t answer him for a minute, my pulse was racing so hard and I thought I was going to explode with anxiety. I fought to keep a panic attack at bay, mostly because I didn’t want to scare C. but also because I knew that I was already pushing it as far as getting to work on time and I’ve been “talked to” about tardiness before. I finally answered C. in a breathless voice much different than my usual one. “Mommy wasn’t paying attention, buddy. Mommy just wasn’t paying attention but everything’s okay now.”


And yes, you smartasses out there, I’ve tried all the tricks to keep myself awake. I even googled it. I have been going to bed no later than 9:30; I open the window and let the cold air blast me in the face, I’ve tried chewing gum because Google said moving your mouth gives your brain something to focus on other than sleep; coffee doesn’t work because I drink tea by the gallon and the caffeine has no effect on me. Other than literally pushing toothpicks into my eyelids and forcing them open, I don’t know what else to do. My boss selfishly refuses to let us come in to work at 11:00, or even give us a nap break in the middle of the day. The world continues to selfishly revolve and make the sun come up at the most inopportune times. My car won’t make itself uncomfortable or stick nails in my butt every time I start to drift. No one will cooperate with me!