There are mornings when I resist adulthood, refuse responsibility like a whining, tantrum throwing four-year-old willful child. I don’t want to! I thrash about in my bed literally, defiantly avoiding the floor and verticality. I don’t want to! Get up. Go exercise. Feed the cat. make the lunch. Get dress for work. I don’t want to! I think that I’ve been working since I was fourteen. Never call out sick. Never bail on my duty. I can be counted on. But I don’t want to! Can’t I just be a slacker? Can I call out sick? Nope. Cuz then who does my work? No one. And so, I get up. Begrudgingly. With the slow-walk of a petulant child who does not want to go to school. I don’t want to!
And why do I feel like this? Why do I want to not go to work? Because I want to stay home and work at home! I am sick in the head. I want to clean the fridge and mop the floor and dust the ceiling fans and and clean the range hood. My magical thinking doesn’t flow to shopping or going to the beach. I want to pull up my drawbridge and shelter in place.
This is the mark of an introvert who works in a profession that asks them to be extroverted and who scheduled herself for TWO events at the performing arts center AND a professional association meeting All in the five day work week. It’s just too much. I want that rainy day, inside-the-house tent that I crawl into and read a book and disappear.
Yet, I get up. I get vertical. I walk – like every morning. I make my lunch and get ready for work and yes….I GO TO WORK. And I will do the day but inside, in that deep spot where my little girl self still lives, I am screaming at the top of my lungs, “I don’t want to!”