Cloudya

“Plummet,” I say to myself, “plummet.”

Every night when I go to bed. Plummet. Don’t dawdle or linger, plunge right into sleep. You need every single second. Don’t ease into it. Don’t dip your toe in and languish. Fucking. Plummet.

In five hours I will be up with a feverish, unhappy baby. I’ll be rocking and shushing and soothing. In five hours I’ll need to be strong. Strength that came from nothing and was forged out of sheer will because there was no easing into motherhood. There was no trial run or test drive. There was no watching from the water’s edge. There was me, and there was the deep end, and a whole world of metaphors couldn’t have prepared me for what I’d have to do to keep myself afloat.

So I lay down, and I close my eyes, and I tell my body what to do. I’m asleep in under five seconds. I know how to do this. I know how to plummet.