Now it feels like a real-time diary entry. Not that I’m apologising. I’m using this space to talk about things that may just all of a sudden come up. It’s a space for me to unapologetically write what’s on my mind in the moment. A safe place to help keep myself accountable while sitting in reflection about the part I played in the whole thing.

This morning has only lasted two and a half hours so far, as I write this at 10:00 a.m. But already it’s been enough to make me cry, to make me doubt my sanity, to crave an alcoholic drink just to cope. And quite frankly, nothing of any real significance has happened. It has all manifested from my own insecurity, my own inability to rise above the mediocre, that has made today, so far, unbearable.

For some bizarre reason, in the whirlwind of haste that every school morning dictates, my usual method of choosing what to wear rests wholeheartedly on whatever is clean or lying on top of the pile. So I put on a shirt instead of my signature hoodie. My comfort lies in clothing that creates an extra layer of invisibility. Hoodies are safe clothing for me. But this morning was different. Dressed in jeans and a shirt, I went to put the kids in the car when my almost ten-year-old came out with, “Why are you wearing that?”

I’m not even sure it was a question. His tone carried the kind of youthful honesty that hits harder than it should.

My reaction was minimal. “It’s my shirt,” I replied. But as if I hadn’t heard him the first time, he repeated it. In the rush of needing to get two kids into the car and drive through roadwork-stalled traffic, I knew it wasn’t the time to enter into an unwinnable conversation with a ten-year-old about my clothing or how it has very little to do with him. There’s a time and place, and that moment wasn’t it.

Still, it sat with me. His comment lingered and swirled like the ebb of a geyser, starting gently and then quickly building into something far more powerful, stronger, and devastating. Overthinking. A cruel side effect of life.

Then my twenty-year-old came in, his day off work, covered in grease and oil from his car. He saw a hoodie sprawled across the banister and asked why I was changing. I told him I’d developed a complex about the shirt I was wearing. His response was meant to reassure me that what I had on was fine, though it came wrapped in a quiet insult about what I’d wanted to change into. He told me hoodies made me look pathetic, which only added to the already spiralling rhetoric now filtering through my thoughts.

We were on time for school, yet the gates were being shut. I was made to sign one child in while the other made it through. In quiet frustration, I pointed to my watch and said, “He’s on time.”

“There’s no need to sign him in for a late mark,” I added, but her curt reply made it clear my challenge wasn’t welcome.

“He won’t be on the register if you don’t sign him in,” she said firmly.

To add insult to injury, I also had to tick a box giving a reason for his ‘lateness’. Under my breath, I muttered something about how there was no reason, but still, I ticked a random box.

My frustrations were overwhelming this morning. It’s not typical of me to react like that. Normally, my obedience and quiet acceptance of most things stop any kind of outward reaction. But today has already been heavy.

Maybe that’s the whole point of this space. To see myself in real time, even when it’s uncomfortable. Mornings like this remind me how quickly my self-doubt can take hold, how one comment can unravel everything I thought I’d steadied within myself. But it also reminds me that I’m still learning, learning to pause before I spiral, to breathe before I drown in it.

Writing it down here feels like reclaiming some control, even if it’s just through words. It’s a way of saying I see you, I hear you to the parts of me that still need gentleness. Maybe tomorrow will be lighter, maybe it won’t, but tonight I can say I showed up for myself, even when it hurt.