Awake

Originally posted on October 17, 2014 

I remember a day when being awake in the middle of the night was a normal part of who I was. Of course, there was usually alcohol or cocaine, or both, involved and I was much younger. I also thought I was immortal, could scale walls, and nothing in the world could touch me.

This night, some thirty years later, when I am up at this hour (which happens to be 2:30 am) it’s due to short term insomnia and anxiety. I suppose at this moment I should be thrilled I didn’t wake in the throes of one of my more vicious enemies, the 3 a.m. panic attack.

My heart isn’t pounding, I’m not fighting to breathe or drenched in cold sweat. But something is bothering me and it is enough the keep me awake tonight.

Did I mention that I hate to be awake in the middle of the night?

It brings reminders of days I would much rather forget. Sure, the house isn’t full of people talking over each other in a drug induced certainty that we know all the world’s issues AND how to solve each and every one, not realizing in the morning that we will just be paranoid, sleep deprived idiots lucky enough not to have killed ourselves this time.

This night, still some thirty years later, finds me in my corner of the couch already drinking coffee since I know I won’t be going back to sleep. I am writing this post in hopes of expelling, at least temporarily, the demons that I fight even in slumber. At least this time they haven’t crippled me to the point where I am struggling not to wake my husband, begging him to make it go away or considering calling 911 because I’m convinced this is the heart attack I’ve been waiting to happen for years now. My children sleep in their rooms, still hours to go before they need to wipe the sleep from their own eyes and get about their days.

So I sit where I find comfort, in the ‘worn to the shape of my butt’ corner of the leather La-Z-Boy couch and I write words for whoever might be listening and hope that someone will say, ‘Me too.’

Not because I want someone else to feel this same lack of control over their own thoughts and feelings or because I want them to be lying awake perpetuating the cycle considering all the things that will be wrong today because they didn’t get enough sleep.

I just don’t want to be alone. I despise my own company in the middle of the night. I catastrophize. Seriously….we are out of pickles and hand soap.

I wish I could anticipate these issues. In reality I should have. We have had sickness in the house, the flu or another virus running the course of our house, touching everyone in its wake and has had two kids home from school for days at a time, Jeff is leaving again today for the fourth time in as many weeks. I’ve been sick and behind on all things which are piling up to become the mountains I loathe. (Actually they are hills. Tiny mounds really. But perhaps you know). It’s the lack of control, the disorder of things normally ordered and routine.

I’m certainly not solving any world problems, or local ones for that matter, tonight. I’m also apparently not sleeping since it’s time for me to wake my husband so he can get on the road. Again.

In the light of the day I will be able find the patience I need to claim my rational, sane side once more and I will likely forget this happened.

Until next time.

photo credit: Victor Porof via photopin cc