Escape is on my mind

Every night for the last week, I stretch the night by refusing to sleep. Pulling the blanket over my head, I hold off the new day. I can’t believe that two weeks of my holidays are gone. And all I have left is two more weeks. In March, my exhausted body felt that this break would never come. Now, that it's here, it feels too short. The days are shrinking.

Lately, I find myself in new roles. I had to talk to my female students about positive body image when I over heard a group of girls say, “I feel blotted…You look fat……..We look fat.” I felt that it was my responsibility to interject. I talked to them about being positive, loving their body shape, and that cool girls don’t put each other down. With their eyes, they stamped OLD on my forehead. Old in that sense that I have no clue.

I foresee my nephew attaching this same label on me when I speak to him. Something I’ve been putting off for the last week. My sister asked me to talk to him since I pay for his university tuition. She feels that he would listen to me. Like most teenagers, he slacks off with his household chores. This isn’t a big deal, but to his mother it is huge. Last week, she kept saying that he lives in the Philippines, and there’s no room for error if he wants to survive. I haven’t made the connection between household chores and surviving. But somehow, I’m an adult figure that needs to say, “Smarten up.” A hard role since I’d seen him only twice. Sending cards, letters, and showering him with gifts when I come for a visit is the only relationship we’ve ever had.

This role of being responsible to and for young adults feels foreign. I’ve been responsible and accountable for my own life for as long as I could remember, but being a role figure feels matriarchal. I find my shoulders droop with the weight of responsibilities.