The Notebook Page That Sent Me Spiraling
There is a particular kind of panic that settles into your chest when you start doing survival math at midnight.
I am talking about calculator-glowing-on-your-face, staring-at-bank-accounts-like-they-personally-betrayed-you kind of math. The kind where every number somehow multiplies into three more problems.
That was me the other night.
I have a bill past due that I cannot pay. Rent feels impossible this month. We are out of diapers again. My sales have cut in half this year, and while my family has been helping me stay afloat, they are really struggling too.
There is a uniquely humiliating feeling that comes with needing help as an adult, especially when you are already doing everything you can think of to stay above water. Selling clothes online. Pawning heirlooms that were supposed to be passed down to your daughters. Applying for government assistance. Budgeting so aggressively you start feeling like a war-time mother rationing paper towels and juice boxes like precious resources in some post-apocalyptic film where society collapsed but Target somehow survived.
And somehow it still does not feel like enough.
So I started looking at full-time jobs with the State of Michigan again.
The Numbers Started Reading Like Horror
People hear “full-time job” and picture stability.
I pictured stability too…until I actually started writing everything out.
The commute alone would add daily gas costs and wear on a vehicle that is already at 127k miles. Daycare for two small children would consume a massive portion of my income before I even saw the paycheck. Crossing the income threshold would severely reduce or eliminate assistance programs currently helping keep my household functioning.
After factoring everything in, returning to full-time work would still leave me over two thousand dollars short every month.
Read that sentence slowly.
A full-time job.
A government job.
A job people would describe as “secure.”
And I would still be drowning financially.
Those calculations do not even include diapers, baby wipes, toilet paper, paper towel, household products, clothes, copays, birthday gifts, oil changes, random fees, or the endless tiny purchases that quietly bleed families dry one transaction at a time.
At one point, I genuinely laughed because the entire thing started feeling absurd in a dark comedy sort of way. Like if capitalism and motherhood got locked in a room together and somebody handed A24 a camera.
Somewhere along the way, employment stopped guaranteeing survival.
The Invisible Cost Nobody Factors In
There is another part of this conversation people rarely acknowledge.
My daughters are still little.
They still ask me to sit beside them for movies. They still want me to play. They still reach for me first when they are scared, hurt, excited, sleepy, or overwhelmed.
These are not years you can archive and revisit later once life becomes less chaotic.
A calculator cannot measure the cost of losing hours of your life to commuting, exhaustion, rushed evenings, and constant recovery from burnout. There is no budgeting category for emotional availability. No financial advisor asks how many bedtime stories disappear while you are sitting in traffic trying to afford daycare.
And mothers are expected to absorb that loss quietly.
That part haunts me more than the financial numbers themselves.
The realization that I could sacrifice enormous amounts of time, energy, health, and peace just to remain financially underwater anyway feels dystopian. Like being trapped inside a haunted house where every hallway leads back to another version of survival mode.
Modern Motherhood Feels Like a Rigged Game
Mothers today exist inside an impossible contradiction.
You are expected to work as though childcare is effortless.
Parent as though exhaustion does not exist.
Heal while carrying constant stress in your nervous system.
Budget around inflation that rises faster than people’s paychecks.
Remain soft, patient, emotionally available, and grateful through all of it.
And if you crack under the pressure even slightly, people start looking for character flaws instead of structural problems.
Lazy.
Irresponsible.
Bad with money.
Not trying hard enough.
Meanwhile, so many mothers are standing in the middle of their kitchens performing emotional witchcraft just trying to keep the lights on. Stretching meals. Reworking budgets. Selling belongings. Rearranging schedules. Sacrificing sleep, peace, health, and identity trying to summon stability out of thin air.
People love to say, “Just get a job,” because they are imagining an economy that no longer exists for many families.
They are imagining a world where hard work automatically creates breathing room.
For many parents, especially mothers, the reality feels completely different. Employment often rearranges the struggle instead of removing it. The pressure simply changes costumes between scenes.
One version leaves you terrified at home.
The other leaves you exhausted everywhere else.
Somewhere Between the Panic and the Pencil Marks
Somewhere around midnight, surrounded by bills, open tabs, calculator math, and numbers scribbled across a notebook, I realized I had been approaching this entire situation like it was a personal moral failure.
Like if I could just budget harder.
Work harder.
Sell more.
Sleep less.
Push myself further.
Become more efficient somehow.
Then maybe I could finally outrun the constant feeling of instability.
But the truth sitting in front of me felt much uglier than that.
I am not failing adulthood.
Adults are being asked to survive inside systems that no longer function the way people pretend they do.
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