I cried in a toilet cubicle at 9:40am.
Not delicately. Not like in the movies.
No slow, poetic tear. No beautiful sadness.
Just me, shaking, pressing a fist into my mouth so no sound would come out.
Because I had a job to do.
Because adults don’t collapse.
Because if I let it out, even for a second, I don’t know that I’d come back from it.
I’m exhausted in a way sleep can’t touch.
My legs were twitching and heavy, like electricity trapped in cement.
My brain was fire.
My chest was full of static.
I sat. I stood. I sat again.
I silently begged for someone to notice—but also prayed they wouldn’t.
Because how do you explain that you’re not okay, and haven’t been for a long time, and the world just kept happening anyway?
He trimmed the brambles.
He sent a photo with a kiss emoji.
He meant it as love—his love is often doing, not saying.
He can’t sit in the pit with me, not the way I sit in mine, but he still tries to reach down with something useful.
And today, that was hedge trimmers.
And it did help. Not everything. Not the aching. But something.
Because when your skin doesn’t feel like your own, and your brain is screaming under your smile, even someone cutting your weeds can feel like being seen.
Later, I took the girls to the beach.
We didn’t talk about the day. We just moved—warm sun, salty breeze, little feet in the sand.
Then I came home and stepped into an ice-cold shower, and for the first time in days, the scream in my body went quiet.
It wasn’t the sea. But it did.
It didn’t fix me.
It didn’t erase the pit.
But it reminded me I’m still here.
That I’m still able to be touched by small things.
And tonight? That’s enough.