Destined

IV

4:16pm

After spending the entire morning napping with her son and almost all afternoon cleaning and tidying up the apartment while Noah played with his toys and watched his favourite cartoon - Curious George - to which she shamelessly enjoyed, she finally had a chance to sit.

Motherhood is hard as hell. Being a single mom is even more difficult. At least to Erin it is. She didn't expect it to this difficult.

She knows there are plenty of single moms who manages to do it all by themselves and do it perfectly but for Erin, she's threading on thin ice.

She's doing alone for what was designed as a two-person job. Working two jobs, cooking their meals - mostly Noah's - since she hardly ever eats and when she does, it's always just toast, cleaning, looking after Noah - performing her duties and responsibilities as a mother in the best way she knows - and the cycle repeats itself.

At times, she feels as though she's trapped underneath a mountain of responsibilities that wouldn't allow her to invest in anything but being a mother.

She needs to feel loved again, she craved to be loved. She wants to find her great love, her companion for life but she can't; she's afraid of bringing strangers into Noah's life, afraid of people rejecting her because she has a child, afraid of giving Noah false hope of a father, she's afraid of sharing him with anyone else. She wants her son all to herself.

She feels guilty that she has to bring Noah up this way, as a single parent. Every child deserves to have two parents.

Look what Bunny's single parenting had done to her!

She have tried, god knows how hard she've tried to give him everything he needs but sometimes, that's just not enough.

She often finds herself feeling physically, emotionally and spiritually worn out. And she's certain Noah noticed it too. No wonder he hates being with her.

She would hate being with a Debbie Downer too.

All she has to do right now was to clean up the mess he've made. If clanging and throwing toys across the apartment and biting every toy he could get his hands on was called playing, he, sure as hell, had done a superb job.

But it's ok. She've learned to take a breather.

He's just overly excited, which was good since he's hardly happy at home.

He's also learning new things every single day, processing fascinating stories and information, it excites her to watch him figure out the world.

He's a genius.

She's certain he's the smartest baby on the planet. She've never seen a baby who spends most of their time with a book, flipping through pages with their chunky little fingers like Noah does. He loves to read. In other words, he loves to force her to read to him.

"Mama. Mama." he would hold his favourite book in his tiny hands, either crawling or stumbling on his chubby legs before handing her the book, signalling her that it's story time.

He would gurgle and coo for her to read for him. And, sometimes, scream and squeal when she wouldn't listen. Leaving her no choice but to.

But when she's extremely tired, she would completely ignore his pleas. She knows she shouldn't but after a long night at work, sometimes all she wants was to sleep forever. It's as simple as that.

One day, she'll regret it. Sooner or later, he'll learn to read by himself. It's then that she'll want to read to him. She'll miss these moments.

So here she is, having just realised her baby had fallen asleep on her lap with his thumb in his mouth. She had been so immersed in the witty story that she had completely blocked out her surroundings.