No woman no cry

"And I never want to give it back
It's a slave to my wrist"
-P.O.S.

Twilight ushered in the above words. Filtering through quadruplet mechanically subdued speakers, the words struggled to be heard over the high-volume aimless chatter of pre-school girls, strapped into double behemoth car seats. Tonight, as of late, and generally, I feel as if I have become a peon to my hands; my mind, appetite, and sleep deprivation, a triangle of minions. The two restless legs stuck onto my padded hips could use a strenuous treadmill run stuck on steep incline repeat. The pile of hair atop my head is in desperate need of a good washing, scrub, and kneading. It is a custom made frame of dirty curls displaying for-show-only several handfuls of artificially straightened locks – stream of bubbles through the eyes sold separately. Eyeing me from the desk is a legal pad length list of potential employers, who I presume to be eagerly awaiting the electronic receipt of my exaggerated resume. Despite, I still sit folded, the laptop resting on the pivot point of my stomach, writing a blog. Still semi-unemployed (apart from my role as temporary mother), broke, and out of shape.

This morning: 6:00 A.M., pre-sunrise, and cold. I rolled myself into a sluggish ball and tucked into the folds of skin a mug of caffeinated tea. A pair of eyes still rimmed with sleep bathed in the glow of the television. The overly made-up news anchors alternated between gravity and extorted humor, when a commercial for eco-friendly laundry detergent interrupted the incessant back-and-forth banter. A sickly looking child and her actor father shoved their unusually elongated faces into matching stacks of just-washed towels, all while the camera-friendly mother looked on approvingly, smitten by the fair-faced pair. I contemplated the dynamics of the T.V. family as pea-sized saline drops welled in the inner corners of my eyes, wetted the line of eyelashes, and rolled down the freckled apples of my cheeks. I sniffled in a vain attempt to block the oncoming rush of tears. Useless, I began to cry from the laundry detergent marketing scheme – Bastards. This particular morning was not the exception. I have been experiencing a liquidation of face each morning over the past two weeks: commercials of starving children, movie previews, loud arguments, MSN homepage articles, Oprah, an empty hotmail inbox all have contributed. I have become the epitome of the constantly in emotional crisis woman.

However, this November morning I was more baffled by my early morning breakdown than was customary. I wiped the tears with polar fingertips and suspiciously licked the salted icicles. I have long thought myself too hardened to cry at such a farcical display of family love. How can a non-menstruating woman cry over an advertisement for green eco-friendly laundry detergent? Just as the confusion had begun to damn the flow of tears, my increasingly annoying text message alert sounded. It was 6:20AM, the girls still snug in the warmth of their pastel colored Barbie sheets, an eerie dawn silence had settled over the house, and I alone was wrapped in it. Who would be awake at such an ungodly hour? Apart from the women coerced into motherhood or those naïve enough to willingly enter into the herd.

The text message read something about not knowing you care for someone until you lose that someone (grammar and style kept for effect). The text proceeded to demand that I forward the aforementioned text to ten "ppl" within five minutes, under pain of having the worst day of my life if I should not. I did not know ten "ppl" that would be awake at such an hour, nor was I even sure I had ten phone numbers saved. I did not count.

It came to me as I sat brooding over my scrimpy amount of friends; this is precisely why for the past fourteen days I have been in a suspended emotional breakdown. I never forward the texts capable of foreshadow, but only those fabricating a penis out of commas and question marks. I vowed over a second dose of caffeine and a bowl of soggy sugared Cheerios to forever forward texts merely hinting at their ability to predict the future. Perhaps, they were right all along.