Some mornings, I don’t get out of bed unless I have to. I’ll drive my teenager to school at 6:30 a.m., have a cup of coffee, and crawl back in bed to read or stare at the ceiling or sleep. Not every day. Just on bad days.

I know my ceiling well. It is an eggshell white, covered in a flat matte paint that glows a soft gray in moonlight. I’ll keep the blinds closed so as to gray the daylight, too. If it weren’t for the silence, I could imagine being in a darkened room in a pristine hospital, with whispering nurses shuffling in to take my blood pressure, check the monitors, smile gently to me, nod to each other, and quietly leave.

How nice it would be to be completely helpless in a hospital bed. If I ask for my cell phone to check in with work, the nurses would say shush, your boss called and said you are only responsible for getting better. When my daughters visit and I tell them I’m sorry, that I’ll try to get home as soon as possible to take care of things, they will say shush, we are doing just fine, you are only responsible for getting better. When friends and colleagues notice I’m not at functions and write-ins and volunteer events, they’ll understand and nod and say they are glad I am getting better.

There’s no judgment in a hospital. No one to tell me I have to get myself out of bed, shake it off, get over it already. When you’re in a hospital, people gasp or draw their eyebrows up in concern. They ask if there’s anything they can do to help. They agree that bed is the best place for me, and don’t shake their heads and silently accuse me of shirking my duties.

My sister, Beth, sent me a text this morning with pictures of snowflakes, telling me she thought perhaps I had lost my childhood sense of wonder, and if I could just rediscover it by remembering how much we loved catching snowflakes on our tongues when we were children, and spend some time recapturing that sense of wonder we had as children, perhaps I would get better sooner. She’s not judging me. She’s genuinely concerned and wants to do something to be helpful, to fix it.

I know she reads my FB posts. I am sure she’s grabbing at straws and can’t possibly believe I have lost my sense of wonder. Laying in bed doesn’t stop me from spending time on my phone Facebook app. I share amazing photos from several of NASA’s posts that depict with incredible beauty the wonder of our universe. I laugh at silly kitten videos just like everyone else. I share charitable events and moving human interest stories, news of the world, and curious discoveries and advances in STEM fields.

No, I have not lost my sense of childhood wonder. I can stand on the edge of a ridge at Thacher Park and marvel at how far my eye can see. I can feel my knees wobble as my soul soars toward the blurred curvature of the earth in the distance, where the mountains fall away on this big blue marble of ours.

I eavesdrop on my daughters’ conversations in the living room. I don’t feel guilty about that – a living room is a public space where they know I could walk in at any moment. Besides, if they ever did begin to talk about something clearly private, I would back off. Raise your eyebrows if you want to – it’s true. I think trust and loyalty are the two most important aspects of any relationship, so yes, I back off as soon as I get even the tiniest tap from my conscious that perhaps their words are not meant for my ears.

But I digress. The point is, laying in bed, with the bedroom door cracked, and hearing those two young women laughing over some creative music video or debating whether a dress is blue with black trim or white with gold trim, is music to my ears. They are bonding and building memories that will last them a lifetime. No matter what happens to me, they will have each other, and my guilt at the idea of leaving them settles more gently in my chest at the thought.

Because part of me does yearn to leave them. To leave everything. I’m tired of surviving the crashing waves only to battle them again another day. I’m weary. I’m done.

I still feel awe just remembering the beauty of the sun rising over the Atlantic before a whale-watching trip one summer. I still thrill at the idea of the next adventure one of my fictional characters will take in one of the many half-written manuscripts I have laying around my computer files. I am confident that whatever job I end up with next, I will do it well and earn my salary and kudos.

If I leave, all that would end. If I leave, I will not hold my grandchildren – if I have any – on my lap. I won’t see my sister Amy married to the man I know is just around the corner for her – her one true love that I am as confident is waiting for her as I am confident the Earth will still turn tomorrow.

And I think that’s my point. The Earth turns perfectly fine without me. I am but one small speck in the mass of humanity that is struggling to survive every single day. My daughters will bend under the weight of economic downturns and natural disasters and disease just like I have, just like everyone has and will. Life is very hard, and the human spirit can only take so much of it. I’ve protected my girls from most of it, but not too much because I want them to be strong for whatever may come. I am confident I succeeded.

It’s different for me. Hard life came early for me, and it has aged me before my time. My daughters are filled with the youth and vitality I had lost by the time I was 20. At nearly 50, I feel 100. I’m too tired to keep going, but no one believes me. They say I just need to snap out of it, go for walks in fresh air, taste a snowflake on my tongue, get out of bed and I’ll feel better.

My throat is tight, even at the back and up and down my spine as I write this. My face is hot, and there’s pressure in my ears and nose and eyes, forcing the frustration of being unheard to wetly spill over.

I do get out of bed. I tend to do chores now as necessary, rather than a little every day, but I still do them. When Daisy runs out of jeans, I’ll do laundry. When Demi is working too late too many days in a row to take out the trash, I’ll take it out. It took me two months to unclog the hair out of my bathroom sink, but I did do it. I work every day – if not a steady job, at least I’m temping or pulling my laptop into bed with me to blog for $8 an hour.

I am functioning, but that’s it. I’m going through the motions because my daughters want me to. My sisters want me to. It doesn’t matter that I feel like an old horse that is still drawing a cart long past its prime. They love me so much, they’d rather see me draw that cart with my arthritic tailbone, heavy heart, and dragging spirit than finally – gratefully – lay down to rest forever.

If I did go to the hospital, I could get some rest. But they would pump me with drugs to artificially raise my spirits, I guess with the philosophy that I can fake it ’til I make it. But I’m not sure how that’s so different from binge-watching Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime. (Yes, I have all three. Together, they are still way cheaper than cable). A well-crafted story can always raise my spirits. But story or drugs, neither solve the fact that I must still find a way to survive, pay bills, provide for my daughters, and basically be a productive member of society.

I’d rather be home than the hospital anyway, laying in my own bed, surrounded by the little things that remind me of who I am – like my books and movies and photographs and the voices of my daughters. I would have access to my laptop and cell phone and can explore NASA and Scientific American online. I can curl up into a ball and remember and remember, chewing on those memories until I’ve examined every corner – like poking a tongue into a hole in my tooth, flinching when the pain comes but refusing to stop until I am completely sure I know what it is I am exploring. I need to remember and journal and remember some more – so I can get it all out of me, like squeezing the pus out of a festering wound. All the stories and drugs in the world won’t cure me any better than getting all that yuck out of me once and for all.

And when the pain of squeezing gets close to more than I can bear, stories will give me some escapist breathing room from the stresses of those memories of my too-long life on my tired old soul. I could be an alcoholic or worse, but nope, I find odd jobs, pay what needs to be paid, cook what needs to be cooked, clean what needs to be cleaned, and then stare at either the ceiling or stories until the clock ticks to my next task. Once in awhile, I will get up and join my daughters in the living room. Sometimes my smile is a little strained, and sometimes it’s genuine, but I make the effort because I love them and don’t want them to worry about me laying in bed alone all day. No one believes this either, but I actually like being alone.

I got another text from Beth suggesting I should imagine myself in my perfect retirement setting, that little Cape Cod beach house I would love to have, with weekly maid service and plenty of money to have a nice Christmas with my family and to enjoy a dinner and movie out once in a while, and stay home writing Pulitzer-prize-winning stories every year.

I read The Secret. I have walked The Road Less Traveled. I know the Color of my Parachute. I have no problem imagining my best life. I know the first step to achieving is to imagine. The second step is to write it down. The third is to break it down into smaller, achievable stepping stones. For all of you who are hooked on self-help, let me just say this: make sure your needs can be met by your practitioner or self-help book. Some conditions are more serious than what these folks are trained for. No life coach in the world is prepared to deal with cases of childhood rape or domestic violence, and don’t let them try to convince you otherwise.

I think my growing disdain for self-help comes from the fact that I’ve done it already. They aren’t telling me anything that isn’t basic common sense, that I haven’t already done for myself. I went from being a stripper to reading and writing law impacting millions of New Yorkers. I went from being a battered wife to becoming a successful single parent with two smart, confident, successful daughters who have no trouble taking on the world as needed. I have overcome poverty more than once. I have proven I can fall off horses and get back on. I am a helluva strong woman who has even looked attempted murder in the eye and overcome that, too.

Imagine my retirement and make a plan to get there? Sure, no problem. Of course I can do that.

I just don’t want to. I’m TIRED. No one’s going to make that plan for me – I’m going to have to do it. I’m going to have to imagine, plan, and execute all by myself. Again. And succeed or fail – all on just my shoulders – again. No one’s going to do it for me. No one’s ever done it for me. Since I was six years old, it’s been on me, and I’m just too damned tired now, after 40-some-odd years of troubleshooting. It’s way past my turn to sit down on the curb and let someone else do the driving. Why do people have trouble getting that? Enough already. I’m done.

I say that, yet here I am, knowing that when I finish typing I will get up, put in a load of laundry, check my email, and plan dinner. I wish I could sit with my daughters and make a plan for their future, as well as a plan with a timeline to say goodbye, but I won’t. Whatever I say, no matter how calmly I say it, no matter how sensible my argument and supporting points, they will insist I pull the cart and pretend it’s not too heavy for me now.

Drugs, exercise, stories – none of them are a cure for being done with life, but any one of them will help me bear the cart a bit easier. And as I keep going, perhaps one day one of my stories will have meaning for someone. Perhaps I will get my cottage on a New England beach. And my sisters and children will nod and smile and say see, aren’t you glad you’re still here?

And I’ll nod and smile.