A few years ago it would have been a blank piece of paper staring at me. Ok, maybe more than a few years, but I am *ahem mature enough to remember when writing didn’t involve this blank screen and quiet keyboard. But today it is a blank document screen and a blinking cursor and my racing mind with nothing to say.

Not that my mind is empty or devoid of thoughts to share, just that they won’t form a cohesive story, none of them will come together just right and flow into the electronic box that fixes my spelling without corrective tape and speeds my thoughts into the vast world with the punch of a single key. There are the thoughts of a happy family weekend, when every single activity just screamed at me “I WOULD BE MORE FUN WITH A BABY”. Or the gallon or so of cocktails I consumed just because I can, small reward for not being a breastfeeding mama – a paltry offering to the grieving mother. Or the thoughts of a house full of things that are Joel’s, but might be shared someday if there is another baby. Such a big IF when I know so many who pray for just one. And I don’t want to share them, but I do…or not. Or tomorrow looming large, a day with massive significance and a story I can’t wait to tell, but I have to tell it tomorrow. It won’t be told today. Or thoughts of how fantastically I have mastered the art of putting my foot in my mouth, why can’t that be featured on “America’s Got Talent”? I’d win for sure.

And the thoughts don’t stop; thoughts on my support group meeting – how can I be a person with a support group? Or how about my massive issues with rapidly increasing risk aversion, and how the notion of responsibility of any kind heightens my anxiety to the point that the concept of watering my plants makes me hyperventilate? Thoughts on how much my husband needs me to be someone I think I used to be, or could have become, but am now crippled and broken and praying frantically I can pretend to be; or the thoughts of how hollow a chest can feel when it knows the weight of the baby who doesn’t sleep there. Those thoughts. They whirl and spin and drop in and pop out and distract but they won’t sit quiet and develop and be told enough to process through and be worked out. Not a single one of them.

So now I have a page full of them and I have told you not a single thing and everything all in a moment’s time. And you have seen a glimpse into the whirling dervish of my brain and an essay I wrote for the sole excuse to say “whirling dervish”. Except we all know that is a lie, that this is the truth and fun phrases aside there is so much to say and nothing will be said for there is work to do and the blessed moments of fleeting peace are few today as the cursor blinks and responsibilities beckon.

Perhaps tomorrow the story will write itself.