I Work My Ass Off So She Never Has to Know How Hard It Was

Sometimes I look at my daughter and wonder if she’ll remember how fucking tired I was.

If she’ll remember Mommy always going to work.

Mommy doing homework.

Mommy studying.

Mommy checking the bank account.

Mommy cleaning the house.

Mommy answering emails, handling responsibilities, making plans, chasing goals, and constantly saying some version of:

“Hold on, baby. Mommy has to finish this.”

God, I fucking hate that sentence sometimes.

Because the truth is, I don’t want her childhood memories to be of the back of my laptop.

I don’t want her to remember me always rushing out the door.

I don’t want her to remember asking me to play and hearing, “Give me just a minute.”

Because one day she’s going to stop asking.

And that thought fucking destroys me.

But here’s the part she can’t understand yet:

Everything I’m doing is for her.

Every shift.

Every long day.

Every assignment I finish when I’d rather crawl into bed.

Every time I drag my exhausted ass back up and tell myself to keep going.

I’m not doing this because I love being busy.

I’m not working because I’d rather be somewhere else.

I’m not going to school because I have some deep passion for sleep deprivation and unnecessary fucking stress.

I’m doing it because I have this little girl watching me.

My why.

And I want more for us.

I want financial freedom.

I want stability.

I want to travel with her.

I want to build a life where an unexpected bill doesn’t feel like the end of the fucking world.

I want to be able to tell her yes.

Yes, baby, we can go.

Yes, baby, you can do that.

Yes, baby, Mommy’s got it.

I want her to grow up seeing that her mother had dreams and chased the absolute hell out of them.

Even when it was hard.

Especially when it was hard.

But holy shit, nobody prepares you for how painful it is trying to build a better future while watching the present fly right fucking past you.

I’m a mother.

I’m a 911 dispatcher.

I’m an EMT.

I’m a student studying psychology and paramedicine.

I’m trying to build a career.

I’m trying to build a future.

I’m trying to keep a household functioning.

I’m trying to remember appointments and responsibilities and deadlines and bills and what we need from the store and where the hell that one tiny shoe disappeared to.

And somewhere underneath all those titles is just…

me.

A woman who is fucking tired.

A woman who feels like she’s constantly being pulled in twelve different directions.

A woman who sometimes wonders whether she’s doing too much.

And somehow simultaneously worries that she’s not doing enough.

That’s the mindfuck of being a hardworking parent.

You can give absolutely everything you have and still lie awake wondering if your child deserved more.

More patience.

More adventures.

More undivided attention.

More Mommy.

Sometimes I come home after spending my day helping other people through emergencies, and the person I want most is waiting for me.

My little girl.

Except by then, I’m exhausted.

My brain is fried.

My patience has been stretched.

There are still assignments waiting.

Still things around the house that need to be done.

Still responsibilities demanding something from me.

But she doesn’t understand any of that.

She’s just happy Mommy is home.

And sometimes that fucking breaks my heart.

Because she’ll want to play.

She’ll want my attention.

She’ll want to tell me something incredibly important that somehow takes seventeen minutes and involves approximately nine unrelated plot twists.

And I’m standing there thinking about everything I still have to accomplish before I can sleep.

Then I look at her.

Really fucking look at her.

And realize:

She’s growing while I’m busy surviving.

Fuck.

That’s the part that scares me.

I don’t want to wake up one day with the degree, the career, the money, the stability, and everything I’ve been fighting for…

only to realize I missed the little girl I was fighting so fucking hard to give it to.

So I’m trying.

Not perfectly.

Not gracefully.

Sometimes terribly.

But I’m trying to learn that building our future cannot mean completely sacrificing our present.

Sometimes