I don't know if this even counts as a real confession but I've been meaning to get it out for a while and it's 2am and everyone's asleep so here we are, I guess. I'm 45 and I have three kids, and I think maybe my brain is just… done. Or maybe it's busted, you know? Like, it used to be good. I was always good in school and could remember stuff and knew how to explain things, even the complicated stuff, and now… now I just forget words. Common words. Like, really common words. It started subtly, I think, just little things, like "pass me the… thing, you know, for the… bread." And then my oldest, she's 12, she'll be like, "Mom, the toaster?" And I'll laugh it off and say I'm tired, which is true, I am always tired, but it's getting worse and worse and last week my son, he's 9, he was doing his science homework about planets and he asked me what "rotate" meant, and I just… I couldn't find it. The word. Like I knew what it meant, I could PICTURE it, the earth spinning and all that, but I couldn't say the word "spin" or "turn" or "revolve," nothing came out, just this blank space in my head, and he looked at me like I was a stranger, and it just felt so… flat. Like it should hurt more, I think, but it just felt like a Tuesday. And I think maybe I'm starting to worry a little bit, but I don't know who to even talk to about it because everyone just says "mom brain" and "you're just busy" but this feels different. And then my mom, she's back home, hundreds of miles away, and she's getting worse with her memory, really bad, and every time I call her it's the same stories, the same questions, and I feel this, this GUILT because I'm not there, I should be there, but I can't be there because of everything here, the kids and the job and the bills, and maybe it's just happening to me too, maybe I'm just getting old, or maybe it's genetics, or maybe I'm just… losing it. And then I have to help with geometry homework and I'm supposed to know what "obtuse" means and I just look at the word and it's just… a word. And I want to cry but I don't, I just make up some excuse and tell them to ask their dad when he gets home. And I think I'm pretending to be okay and that I'm just tired but I'm really not.