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I've been thinking about how, in the face of some intense challenges these past five years WHAM WHAM WHAM, I have managed to keep my wits about me.

Is it because I'm a superior human being? Is it because I have anything recognizable as a good habit? Is it because I take a five-minute walk every half hour to stave off death, the latest fear fad suggested by "research"? (Do I keep my wits about me?)

None of the above!

So, I've been thinking about why and how I'm still in relatively good shape mentally and physically (blood pressure: 116/77!) – in addition to all the privileges that come with my race, socioeconomic status, access to education, etcetera etcetera, which are, let’s be real, the leading factors.

Never in my life have I actually prioritized my mental health. And I've been prioritizing it for four months now. As it turns out, watching a lot of TV and not doing shit is what prioritizing my mental health looks like. Importantly, I finally — finally — decided to put my kid in his own bed YES I KNOW HE'S ALMOST FIVE I WASN'T READY HE'S SO FUCKING CUTE WHEN HE GIGGLES IN HIS SLEEP. I stopped cooking, and I walk as much as possible in the mornings at Heron's Head Park. I keep my head down at work (mostly), and I don't start fights (mostly).

It's New Year's Day in San Francisco. The parrots are back, squawking in the Canary Island date palms across the street. It's completely clear again, so from the top of our block we can see the Bay Bridge, Oakland, Alameda, and Mount Diablo in the distance. Yesterday the four of us chased the waves at Crissy Field, let the ocean air cleanse us of 2020.

I'm not going to say it was a shit year. I don't need to. But also, I can't say it. My son was two years old when this started, and now he's three. Since the beginning of his life—since I was in labor with him, when SJ was driving us to the Redwood City Kaiser at 11 p.m., when I had five contractions in the passenger seat of my car as he received text message after text message from an abusive person intent on trying to ruin the birth of his second child—external forces have been trying to wrest my attention from my son.

This is the list I made for myself titled "Shit I've Been Dealing With" to give myself perspective on why I might have had a panic attack on Feb. 22 …

Crusty One-Eye, my sweet, sweet boy, is 10 months old (and for the record, we no longer call him Crusty One-Eye, as we unblocked his tear duct by holding his arms down and squirting breast milk into his eye twice a day with a dropper …

I've been back at work for two months. This is what people say:

IT GETS EASIER.

This is what really happens:

IT GETS HARDER.

I was having a perfectly good day, chasing down some bitch who stole my husband's debit card information and depleted our joint account buying Chinese food, Hawaiian food, and pizza and making a payment to MetroPCS …

SOMETHING MY HUSBAND SAID RECENTLY THAT MAYBE HE SHOULDN'T HAVE:

"I feel great! I got twelve hours of sleep last night!"

It's been quite the transition to motherhood or, as I like to call it, Mom Eats Last. Some days it feels like SJ and I are killing it: We get enough sleep, we eat, we shower, the house gets cleaned, the bills get paid, and we leave the house and return to it, all without killing the baby.

I've settled on a word for how having a baby makes me feel: peeled.

So this is what I've been up to: giving birth, better known as simultaneously vomiting into a bag and gushing blood and amniotic fluid out of your vagina onto a hospital bed as you lie on your side butt-naked in front of your husband and a roomful of strangers.

On Thursday, April 20, SJ and I got married. That day I worked until 2 p.m., threw on my wedding dress in the building's bathroom, and took a Lyft to City Hall.

I am running on fumes. FUMES, I TELL YOU. In addition to having a full-time job, a part-time job, and a daily commute, this is what I've been doing instead of blogging about millennials, bonding with the heirloom tomato in my uterus, and getting my head around the fact that IN TWENTY-ONE WEEKS I WILL HAVE A SON.

This is what I was doing when I found out I was pregnant: DRINKING WINE. This is why: I like wine.

For the past four months, Strong Jawline, my current provider of intercourse, has been telling me I'm pretty.

I've never been accused of such a thing. In 39 years I've been called "striking," "Mediterranean," and "similar to Peter Sellers."

June 16, 2016: Posted on Atlanta Craigslist in Housing > Rooms & Shares*

SWM-53 seeks Girlfriend or Wife. Free rent, power, cable, wifi & food[WHAT I WANT]: I'm seeking a non-smoking female that's probably size 14 or smaller.