Mum

Sometimes in life, all you need is your mum.

The last few days have been unpleasant. I've been plagued with nights filled with horrible dreams - last night I woke up screaming, with my heart about to burst, and ran into the kitchen with my duvet (where I promptly curled up on the floor and went back to sleep) - and I've been exhausted constantly. The room I locked him in - somewhere in the back of my head - has inexplicably opened, and I've been unable to put him back in again no matter how hard I try: I've been crying unexpectedly and without sound in toilets, in restaurants, and in the car on the way to work. I've been sweating constantly, hungry constantly and bad tempered with everyone; my skin has erupted, and I ache all over. My writing has slowed to a complete halt, reading hurts my eyes, and - more to the point - I would give everything I have for one decent cuddle. Everything.

If my mum was here, it would have taken her three minutes to work out what's wrong with me.

"Baby," she would have said as I sobbed into my rice crackers. "Go to bed. You're sick."
"I'm not sick. I'm fine."
"You're sick. You've got a high temperature, you won't stop crying, and you're snapping at anyone within a two hundred metre radius. Go to bed, darling. The day is not going to get better."
"I don't have time to be sick, mum," I would shout, throwing something across the room and stamping my big old 28 year old feet. "I've got too much to do!"
"Does the world feel like hard work today?"
"I guess so."
"Do you feel like you're swimming through it?"
"Yes."
"Do your emotions feel uncontrollable? Do you want to speak to him desperately, for no reason at all? Just because you miss him? Because you're tired and want to hear his voice?"
I would probably start crying again at this point.
"Mmm," I would whimper.
"Are you hot?"
"Very."
"Does your throat hurt?"
"Yes."
"Then you're sick. Go to bed, darling. I'll bring you some ice cream and magazines."
And then she would cuddle me.

Except that mum's not here, so it's taken me a lot longer on my own to realise that I'm not well: at least three days of screaming and sweating and sleeping and crying and wondering if I'm going mad. Three days of trying to fight through it, without a mum by my side.

I'm going back to bed, and I'm staying there for the rest of the day. And I'm not listening to my emotions, and I'm not listening to my urges to call boys that don't actually like me anymore, and I'm not listening to the constant need to cry, or to eat, or to cover myself in ice because I'm goddamn burning up. I'm just going to drink water, and watch videos, and sleep. The only thing I can't do is give myself a cuddle.

There are times in life when the only thing you really need is your mum.

And today, I think, is absolutely one of them.