Late Night Visits From My Discontentment

It’s 11:03 pm and my house is totally silent. The three people who love me more than the world are all peacefully asleep. I can feel the exhaustion creep in the sides of my eyeballs. but for some reason sleep is an ocean away and she begins to whisper to me.

“You’re so unhappy”

Don’t get me wrong: I’m incredibly grateful. But I have a horrid little creature that creeps in, especially late at night.

I’m disgusted with My Discontentment. I try to close doors on it by doing things like deleting social media and running until my big toes feel like they will fall off but it always thrusts its ugly head back in through the cracks. Cracks of frustration and overwhelm. Cracks of exhaustion. Cracks formed by feelings of inadequacy.

My Discontentment is an expert at exploiting the chaos and has the patience of a saint. She slips in between the dirty diapers and the ceaseless sound of pings from Microsoft Teams. Slithers amongst the 5 schedules I constantly juggle, afraid I am forgetting something.

My Discontentment worms her way in and stares at me with big unblinking eyes, daring me to acknowledge her. Daring me to do something about her.

And lately, I haven’t.

Instead I just ignore her and browse RunSignUp, searching for another half marathon even though I know I have looked at every race and filled every available weekend.

But I do it anyway.

And My Discontentment, bored with me, slips away for the evening.

And I sigh a shallow breath of relief as I close the browser and open Substack.

I win. Again.