I put the milk in the cupboard

Dear Delyara, Only for a second. I caught it in time. Still, it stayed with me all evening. Because it wasn’t just a little mistake. It was one more sign that my body is doing tasks while my mind is already on the next thing, and the thing after that, and whether I answered the email, and whether tomorrow’s form is signed, and whether I need to buy fruit, and whether the child’s cough sounds worse. I laughed when I realised. Then I didn’t feel like laughing. These little near-misses are small enough to hide and private enough to go uncited, but they scare me more than they should. Not because I think I’m falling apart. Because I know what overload looks like in women. It often looks exactly like the milk nearly going in the cupboard.