F*** you, blank page

Who’s really blank here?

Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash

I have a thousand words clawing their way up my throat, but they’ve been there for ages and keep slipping back down. I’m bone tired. I don’t care enough. I haven’t posted in over a year.

I spent this year getting my kindergartener into special education—a brutal bureaucratic slog of meetings, forms, and condescending doctor’s appointments. She can’t hold a pencil or write her name. She can’t sit still. Counting confounds her.

While I waited for the paperwork to wind itself through the system, I taught her to read by myself, squeezing her tight in my lap so she wouldn’t collapse in despair. Late at night, when both of us were wilting from the day, of course, because there wasn’t any other time.

But it’s hard to break that crushing habit of silence. The page is blank because I am blank.

Every day for years has been like this: do what you have to do for everyone else, when you have to do it. Because there isn’t any other time.

I have ten minutes to write this now, because there isn’t any other time. But it’s hard to break that crushing habit of silence.

The page is blank because I am blank.

My daughter hates to write. She’ll get down the first few letters of her name and then attack it with that stupid chubby kid eraser, starting over and over, tearing holes in the paper, never finishing. She hates that it isn’t perfect.

How many times have I deleted this page and started over?

F*** you, blank page.

The kids are awake again. I have to go. But this time I won’t delete you.