Wednesday was a bad day.

Not the kind of bad day where you get a flat, your dog pooped on the rug, the sink clogged and your hair didn’t fall how you wanted. Wednesday was a bad emotional day, where my insides were overflowing and my heart felt like it was going to explode and it felt like a fog machine was released into my skull and nothing felt right. I felt empty and full at the same time. I felt heavy and also like I was just gliding about my morning. It was my day off, and my house was a mess, and I felt helpless.

I woke up missing my mom. Yes, five years later and I still missed her as much on Wednesday as I did on the day she died and it took me quite some time to accept and admit that it’s okay to miss someone for that long. Almost everyday, I am fine. Almost everyday I think of her and smile and reminisce for a moment about a time we shared or her perfume or I remember her glasses or her discipline or that one fight we had…and even the fight makes me smile. But Wednesday – Wednesday I wanted to hug her. I wanted a conversation. I longed to smell her cigarettes (which for me is a stretch, because I *hate* cigarettes). And for all of that, I felt the way I did. I had no desire to get out of bed, but I did. I did for my dog. My gripes wouldn’t feed or walk him, and he is a responsibility I learned to cherish. I knew I had laundry, so I brought it to the living room. I did not shower. I did not wash my face. I did not put on pants (and it’s my house so why should I have to, right?).

Gilmore Girls was on Netflix so I prepared to binge watch it and as I became absorbed in the world of a mother-daughter relationship, I grew more heavy, more tired, more sad. But not a “sorry for myself sad.” This type of sad is preceded by a feeling of grief, a knowledge that whatever is making you sad you will never get back. I went to the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Jameson. There were maybe, at best, three or four good swigs left in it from my birthday party, so I cracked it open and finished off the bottle in between text messages, laundry, television, and tears. I cried. A lot. I couldn’t remember the last time I cried. I talked to my best friend on the phone who told me to be strong and I believed all of her kind words and continued about my laundry and my tears, accompanied by a strong buzz.

The buzz was gone by 7 pm. I was still mostly mentally gone at that time. I did, however, feel relief. I  felt like I opened up a cap that was screwed on too tight, like the steam was let out of a boiling pot and it was finally taken off the fire, and I didn’t feel bad for drinking whiskey at three in the afternoon over the holidays or for crying over my mom. I am human.