when a cold cloth over the eyes just isn't enough

Sometimes, when you have a kid, you can feel like they are sucking away your life force, like a cat sucking out your soul, like Rogue leeching super powers from her fellow X-men. They are the little Dorians and you are reduced to a painting, a shell of your former self, growing rapidly more hideous as they venture further out into the world. Even their small crimes, a tiny hand scattering cat kibble to all corners of the house, ages you, adds jowls, produces dozens of wiry grey hairs that grow not from your formerly distinguished temples but directly from the top of your head, as a visual reminder of your energy leaving you through your crown chakra. It is at this point that you feel sorry for your own parents, when you understand why they went to bed at ten, why they were on occasion too tired to finish their beers, why it is that they never went anywhere or did anything (or that was how it seemed then). It is times like this when I really want to invest in a more comfortable couch. I just need more sleep. Then I can resemble this painting instead.

Luckily, when my kid says my name or asks very sweetly where her baby doll might be so she can hug it and kiss it, I don't feel any of this. She warps my mind with her cuteness.