The Weight of Thursday

It’s Thursday. The kids are on the third day of the school year and I’m already feeling lonely. I don’t even know what I’m supposed to be doing. There’s this long list of things I should get done—cleaning the house, catching up on work, organizing—but the truth is I don’t feel it. I don’t have the energy, the motivation, the spark. Instead, I feel lost. Alone. Maybe even a little depressed. And I don’t even understand why.

When I think about work, it just makes me sadder. So much of what I do relies on other people—photographing them, traveling to them, connecting with them. And everyone I want to photograph seems to live at least two hours away, sometimes farther. That travel, that distance—it feels like another wall I can’t climb.

So here I am, on the third day of being home alone. I tell myself I should be using this time wisely, but instead, I feel bad. My husband stops by to grab a coffee, and he wants to help, he wants to support me. He sees me in this state, and I hate that. Because no matter what he says or does, it doesn’t really change the way I feel inside. The heaviness just sits there.

I know the truth: I have to pull myself out of this place. No one else can do it for me. I need to refocus. I know there are things I can do, steps I can take. And yet, I don’t. I sit here instead, feeling like a failure. Feeling like I’m not doing enough, not being enough.

Heavy sigh.