I’m reading my way through a book about journaling, an encouragement to journal for 100 days straight. I will confess, I didn’t journal one day last week. Instead, I started writing a synopsis of The Bear Box Diner. I don’t care. I’m counting it.

Today’s prompt is “How Are You Really?”

The book begins with a professional writer’s insight, a sense of context for the prompt. I read the chapter’s title and felt my heart start to concrete.

I am learning to hate that question.

It’s not that I hate the fact that people care. It’s my response to that question.

The heartstring tension. The lungs snapping in a quick breath of air.

That question is loaded.

How are you really?

I’m really fine. I really am. And sometimes I’m really not. Like yesterday when I woke up to a grief that had begun ten hours before and should have elapsed thanks to a night’s rest that wasn’t restful because of strange dreams that turned into nightmares but weren’t full fledged nightmares because I wasn’t terrified. I was just trying to protect my students from being murdered by roving death squads.

Yeah. That’s not scary. Really.

I really did my best to muddle through yesterday, teaching as hard and as well as I really could all while staring at the clock and counting down hours to minutes to moments to God let me go home because I just want to go to bed or take a shower or eat or stare at my desk and the mounting massive fake-Lego bridge that is sitting in two massive pieces upon it.

I really love that bridge. I really don’t love that bridge because I should have built it two months ago but my brain splintered and I couldn’t think and I couldn’t concentrate and every time I look at that bridge, I really feel like I let someone down. And that someone is someone I really love and really appreciate.

Really.

How I am really doing can depend on the moment. Mornings, which used to be my best time because I am a morning person is when I am really testing the waters nowadays. How am I really feeling at this moment? Do I REALLY want to go to work? Is it really too late to call in sick?

Yeah. Those really are my thoughts until 5:59 when I know that it’s really too late because by the time I could fill out the sub-request form there’s really not enough time to get the really good subs who will respect my lesson plan and do what I really need them to do.

Or, today. I woke up and tested the mental waters. And they were clear. Relaxed. Today was a day of really easy sailing. I went to work. I taught three classes. I did my cafeteria duty. I graded papers and logged in the grades. I answered emails. And then when I came home, I really did feel good.

Really.

I sometimes feel like “really” is me convincing myself of an emotion I may or may not be really feeling at that moment. Is it grief? Or am I just being hormonal? Because when you’re a woman who is 53, those really are questions that merit asking.

Do I really want to put that work off until tomorrow or can I buckle down and just push through it because tomorrow might have some really important other things that have to be done which means I won’t really have the time to do that really important thing that I should do now (like a book review, or a college recommendation, or another set of grades, or that blessed fake-Lego bridge).

I really do love that bridge. It’s saved my mind in so many ways.

Really.

Really is an adverg that Stephen King has recommended killing which I really do understand. We sprinkle it throughout our conversations and dialouges and communications as though it’s measurable and quantifiable when it’s really just six letters, one of which is repeated which makes it really insignficant when one really looks at it.

It carries no weight. Has no direct or concrete meaning. Just a poof of air like that sallow, moist air escaping from a popped bubble gum bubble. It seemed to hold something. Seemed to have weight and merit. But when the gum is smeared across my face and stuck to my hair, it really doesn’t matter anymore, does it?

How am I really doing?

I don’t know. I’m avoiding re-entering the world of Polishing the Bones because it is still being rejected which really hurts. And I’m doing a great job teaching and building material and curriculum and pushing forward and keeping up with my grades. But my dog Leia has blown out her knee which really sucks because she really is in a lot of pain. And I really worry about my children all the time because even though they really are adults, they are still my children and I really try to respect their adulthood and their autonomy and their independence because that’s what a really good parent does.

Really.

I really am fine. For right now. In this moment. I really am fine. But I don’t know about tomorrow. Or even tonight’s dreams which could rob me of my rest or could lull me through eight blissful hours of peace. I hold onto my “fine-ness” because it represents my baseline, my normalcy (yes, I do have moments when that really is how I see myself), my ability to push forward and be myself and be nothing and be everything and just be.

Really.