Just Another Day

October 16th, 2022

It’s just another day.

It’s football day.

My dread is warmer than usual, my anxiety sharper.

It’s not just another day.

My dad legally divorced the Minnesota Vikings in 1998 over an incident neither he nor millions of other sports fans had any control over.

My mom stayed committed to them.

That was what she did.

It became a point of humorous contention in our household. My dad, the jaded cynic, waiting in the wings to remind us that he told us so, that a zebra can’t change its purple stripes.

And my mom, smirking angel, holding on to hope every time.

A writer tends to tell the same story over and over again, and I learned a long time ago that each one of mine is about hope; having hope or losing it; giving hope or holding on to it.

It’s not a secret why. Hope was the house I lived in. My mom didn’t give me second chances; I was an arcade game with unlimited credits. I fucked up, she held onto hope that I would figure myself out, giving me reasons why I should, loving me without condition when I still hadn’t.

It’s two years today that she’s been gone.

I don’t live in a world that rejects me wholy. But my whole world spun on that axis of her hope for me. Nobody will ever see me like she did, and I haven’t been able to reconcile her absence and my worth.

Sometimes it feels like life said I didn’t deserve that kind of love.

So I try to see the world like she did. She wasn’t perfect and operated from dark spaces at times, but she always told me to be nice, and she knew kindness better than anyone I’ve met.

She taught me hope. Not through perfection, but through progress. I just have to make it through another day.

Today is just another day.

It’s not just another day.