When a mother needs a mother

I am sick. Again. Body heavy with tiredness that settles in every corner of me. And all I want, in the quiet between the coughs, in the breath that feels too heavy, is my MOTHER.

To be small again. To be gathered. To let someone else hold the weight of my trembling. But there is no hand on my forehead. No soup warming on a stove I do not have to clean.

Only silence. And a small echo of a wish I swallow before it reaches the air. Because I am the mother now.

And the world does not pause for sick women with children. The world does not pause for my fever that I push behind my eyes. The world does not pause for my heart that fractures quietly while packing lunch and wiping tiny tears.

So I move through the day. I drag my body forward because there is no one to lean into, no shoulder, no reprieve.

Hyper- independence . They call it strength. But it feels more like a childhood that never ended. A wound that never healed. A reflex learned from too many moments where no one ever came.

I move through the day with force. Too aware that the rest is a luxury I can’t afford. Full recovery remains an unfinished story. So I wait for the next blow to my health. The next flare. The next stumble of my own failing body (or mental health) and I brace myself. Alone. In a house full of needs I must meet.

Yet in the quietest corner of me lives a girl waiting to be held. She sits curled in the dark, knees to her chest, whispering the truth I never speak: “I am so tired. I want to be cared for. I want to be someone’s child.”

But until that softness comes, if it ever comes , I am forced to rise, to carry, to mother. Even on days my spirit limps.

Not because I am unbreakable. Not because I’m strong. But because no one is coming.

I am sick. Again. Body heavy with tiredness that settles in every corner of me. And all I want, in the quiet between the coughs, in the breath that feels too heavy, is my mother. But I am the mother now.