Dinner's done, kitchen's cleared. I'm heading upstairs for a bit of creative space, finally.
Then the garden needs a water, it's been so hot. Then a few things for work tomorrow. Then Berkley, sitting there patiently waiting for his biscuits - I go to get them, then put them down again, because I've spotted something else that needs sorting first.
Then I remember something I've left on the desk. Then the water I forgot. Then something in the bathroom that isn't where it should be. Then the towels. Then the washing, still sitting in the basket from earlier. Then something else.
By the time I actually sit down, the evening I'd put aside for the thing that fills my soul is half gone.
None of it, on its own, was anything. That's what makes it hard to explain. If you listed one item to somebody, they'd shrug - it's a towel, it's a loo roll, it's two minutes. But I wasn't doing the one thing. I was doing all of it, one small thing folding into the next, because I was the only person in the house whose attention had landed on any of it at all.
Nobody else in that house saw those things needing doing. Not because they were hiding. Because it isn't their radar that picks them up. It's mine, running quietly in the background of every room I walk through, whether I want it on or not.
That's the part I don't think gets said enough. The mental load isn't only about doing more than everyone else. It's about being the one who's already a few steps ahead of the room, seeing what needs doing before anyone else has even arrived at the thought.
Poor Berkley sat through most of it, waiting for biscuits I kept setting down and picking back up. I got there eventually. I got upstairs eventually too, to what was left of an evening that was supposed to be mine from the start.
I don't think the answer is doing it all faster, or with a better system. I think it's just worth noticing that none of it was ever actually invisible. I saw every single thing. I was just the only one who did.
What are the small things your attention catches before anyone else even thinks to look?
If this felt familiar...
You might have asked yourself, Why does everything feel like my responsibility?
That's the question at the heart of the first Everyday Alignment Relief Guide. It explores how we become the person who notices, remembers, anticipates and quietly picks things up - and what can begin to change when we realise not everything we notice automatically belongs to us.
Why Does Everything Feel Like My Responsibility? - A Relief Guide for women carrying the mental load.
I have been exploring this from time to time, even discuss it with my husband and kids, but eventually I am back in the saddle of the heaviness. This was such validation that I am not alone in the struggle. Thank you.