Comment: A long, rambling one.

Stress is bringing out all sorts of scary things in me and my children: migraines, anxiety, the refusal to sleep in one’s own bed, regular night time waking to hunt errant or missing stuffed animals. Sheesh.

I’m freakin’ exhausted and didn’t realize how hard it would be to be the solo parent for any great length of time. And, though I hate to sound pat about it, I don’t know how single parents manage. To be the sole person in charge of your child 24/7, that’s pretty intense.

Sure, for many parents, custody is split, which means that after several days or weeks of intensity, you get the week off. But of course, there are many moms and dads who are going it alone all the time. And though it’s a tired cliché, I don’t know how they do it.

I’m beat, man. And it’s not even hard stuff, it’s the constant answering of questions, and ferrying around from one event to the next, and the repeated snack packings every freakin’ night. It’s not hard, it’s arduous. Does that make sense?

On top of this, my kids are definitely stressed. Their dad is living across the country and comes home for 36 hours at a time. It’s better than nothing, but it does kind of leave your head spinning. We miss him. He misses us. But that’s just how it is right now.

And I’ve noticed that the people around us are already fading away, just as we are, no doubt, pulling subtly away, because leaving is difficult and it is always sad to leave friendships, sometimes especially burgeoning ones that weren’t allowed to fully bloom.

We get to start the whole “new in town” thing again in a couple of weeks. I don’t know if I have the moxie for it. It takes so much damn energy to force people to get to know you. And of course, to truly get to know people really does take years. And we’ve lived here for less than two. So we’re kind of fading out now, but we never fully faded in.

Which leaves me melancholy.

I’m trying the Pollyanna approach because it beats bitching about everything (at least most of the time) but sometimes the smile does not extend to the eyes. I feel like we get an opportunity by moving to start fresh, and there’s so much I want to do, to become. My once dormant ambitions are fighting like wild to surface, and I can’t hold them in much longer. What it comes down to is this: how brave will I be in our new city? How many risks will I take in spite of fear and (natch) anxiety a-plenty? How much will I actually DO, instead of waiting to do it, waiting for some non-existent “ideal time” ?

The time is now. There is no other time.

I remember seeing Madonna interviewed on American Bandstand back in her early days, and he asked her what she wanted out of life: her answer? World domination. I’m not looking to conquer the world. I’m just looking to make a dent in it in my own way. And I’m tired of waiting for the “right” time.

Ladies, gentlemen: Start your engines.