Mama says she’s taking me to the playground today! I’m so excited because I haven’t been in ages and Jackson taught me how to do the monkey bars the other day at school. Now I will get to show Mama how strong I am! Maybe that will make her happy. She’s been really sad for a while and super sleepy. She mostly naps on the sofa or just lies there staring. Not even at the TV or anything, just at the wall or the floor. I sometimes call it her awake naps, but she won’t wake up properly for hours. When she does wake up from them, her hands shake a lot and she’s really grumpy. That’s okay though, sometimes I’m grumpy when I wake up too.

I knew today was gonna be a good day when Mama made me breakfast. I had cereal with milk that tasted nice and not all sour, plus TWO pieces of toast. Sometimes Mama forgets to make me meals. She almost never eats food. But today she also ate toast. We were toast buddies! I love my Mama.

I hold her hand and try to run to the playground because I want to hurry up and show her my monkey bar tricks, but she tells me to slow down. I do because I don’t want to make her sad, but inside I want to GO GO GO and fly to the playground. It feels like it takes forever but we get there and Mama walks to the swings. I don’t really want to swing, I want to go on the monkey bars, but I want to make Mama happy. I’m really bad at making the swing go up and down. I try really hard but I can never get it to move much.

“Mama, I can’t make it go, can you push me?” I ask her as she slowly swings next to me.

“Not right now, baby,” she says, rubbing her eyes. She still looks sad. “Why don’t you go on the slide or something?” For a second I feel a bit like I might cry but then I remember about the monkey bars.

“Mama, watch what I learned on the monkey bars!” I run over to them and start climbing up. I use my big strong arms to grab onto the first bar and then I try to move forwards. I fall onto the floor.

“Poop,” I say as I brush sand off my knees. I don’t look at Mama but I know she must’ve seen me fall. That’s okay, I’ll do better this time. I climb up again and this time I make it to the second bar. And the third bar. And the fourth bar. I keep going until I reach the end.

“Mama, I did it!” I shout, so happy that she saw how cool I was. I turn to look at the swings.

Mama isn’t watching me. There is a man sat on the swing next to her. I know him, he’s her friend that comes around sometimes. I don’t like him. He smells funny and pretends not to see me. He passes Mama something and she gives him some money. They do it really quickly but I know because they do it all the time.

I try to wipe away the tears that I can feel in my eyes. I guess Mama’s gonna have another awake nap today.