Come sweet sleep...

I have a horrible secret power. When I look at people - strangers usually - they trip. Sometimes it’s just a small slip and they regain their balance. Other times, when I’m in a really dark mood, they fall completely over. I first discovered this power when travelling to school on the bus. Every time I looked out the window and stared - just so - at a pedestrian, they would trip. This was apartheid South Africa and there was usually a policeman prodding them with a baton and a rather unfriendly Alsatian, but the tripping still seemed only to happen when I looked. I don’t know the statistics on how many people are tripping at any given moment in time, but I would put money on the fact that there’s a concentrated amount around the times when I’m staring intently. On a visit to India it was worse than tripping. I would look out the window and dogs would projectile vomit, mothers would maim their children, young men would pee in the gutters.

I know for sure that this stuff never happens when I’m not looking. Otherwise I would see it. Which is good. Because while I’m busy stopping my life to breed, I am reassured that the world will simply wait for me. I don’t have to worry about the fact that I haven’t earned a cent in the last year and my ability to do so is currently impaired by the fact that I don’t get more than 2 hours consecutive sleep. I don’t need to be concerned by the giant gap in my CV or the worry that I may never be able to write a script again without being interrupted by crying children. I needn’t give a second’s thought to the tick-tick-ticking away of my life while I change nappies and feed and burp and shovel chocolate in a desperate attempt to fill the enormous hole that’s left now that my belly is empty and my life-giving purpose complete.

Someone offered me a job making an interesting doco with a good budget today. It’s not even 2 weeks since I’ve given birth. I want to scream and run away and also I want to do it so badly. I haven’t responded yet. I’m paralysed because I can’t say yes but I don’t want to say no. There is something so small and banal and shell-like about living according to a feeding schedule. But the babies are amazing and perfectly formed and needy. And this is their lives and I’ve brought them here so I can’t run off and make docos right now.

And I’m going for a walk and I look at myself in the reflection of a car window and I can’t recognise that person, that stranger. And before I can think about how saggy my tummy looks I’ve tripped.

And I’m lying on the floor laughing because I may be a hormonal, morose old hag with stretch marks, no sex life and a gaping nothingness where my career used to be... but at least I have a horrible secret power.