Spoiled Only Child

With every mistake we must surely be learning

I'm still here. For a while there, I thought I was going to fade away into a grayish blob sitting in front of the computer, and that eventually Mr. SOC would have to move me into a corner and start using me as an end table or something. But somehow, I keep getting up every day and my arms and legs still work and I have the chance to try again. And every once in a while, I even remember that my tiny little drama is not all that serious—and that maybe I don't have to make such a big fucking deal about it.

I was going to write a post here about the tragedy of all the time I've wasted procrastinating and hating myself for it. How, if I had put all that time to good use, I could have earned an advanced degree or written a series of novels or built a wind-powered turbine or something. But what good does it do to think about that? None of us are machines. And all those wretched hours have taught me something about compassion, for myself and others, and reminded me that I'm not really in control of anything. Would I rather have spent that time learning some other kind of lesson? Hell, yes. But, as much as I'd like to think otherwise, that's not really my choice.

While my waking hours have been a bit of a struggle these past couple months, one part of my life is going fairly smoothly. Sleeping. (I know, I just jinxed it.) But I've been thinking about why I've been able to sleep lately, and I think it's a lesson that could apply to all parts of my life. I remember all the months and years that I felt like everything on earth hinged on whether I could fall asleep at night. If I didn't sleep, it was evidence that I was mentally ill, that my whole life was in a downward spiral, that I had a permanent unsolvable problem, that my marriage was on the skids, that I had no control over my own life. Now, I just take it one night at a time. If I have trouble sleeping tonight, all it means is that I don't sleep tonight. It doesn't mean that I won't sleep tomorrow night, or next week, or five years from now. It doesn't mean that I might as well just end it now because the rest of my life is going to be nothing but one long sleepless hell. I'm able to take the whole thing a little more lightly. It's just one night where I lie in my safe, comfortable guest room and read for a couple extra hours, nothing more. I'm also able to maintain a bit more perspective now. Even if I can't sleep, I still have things that millions of people around the globe would kill for: a safe, quiet place to lie down at night, a comfortable bed with warm blankets, a healthy child asleep in the next room, to name just a few. Now, I can remember to be grateful for those things, whether I fall asleep easily or not.

So while sometimes it feels like I can't stop slipping into the same unproductive patterns over and over, I really am learning something on this frustrating journey.

Gratitude

I have been such a mess lately, and it's time for me to pull it together. I keep thinking about gratitude, or to be more specific, my lack of it. I'll have a really difficult problem (like insomnia), and I'll rage and wish for it to be different. I'll tell myself that if I could just solve this one problem, I could be OK. And then the problem gets solved, and I spend about 5 minutes being grateful before moving onto the next big problem. I guess it is the human condition to always think more of what we don't have, to focus on what is hard or painful, rather than to appreciate what we have. But I don't want to be trapped in this cycle of wanting wanting wanting, always trying to fill some unfillable hole. It's the whole reason I have spent so much time practicing meditation, because I want my life to be something more than running around catering to my desires and aversions, always feeling like happiness is somewhere just around the corner.

So this morning, I'm going to spend a few minutes thinking about things I am grateful for:

I am grateful that, most of the time, I can sleep again. Did I even tell you that I took an 8-week meditation course? And that it was fabulous? And that the chief result has been that most nights I can now lay down in bed next to my husband, without any sleeping pills, and fall asleep? I never in a million years dreamed the course would have such a tangible result, but it has. I'm kind of afraid to even write about it, for fear this gift will be snatched from me. But it feels like somehow the cycle of bedtime fear has been broken. I think the most important piece of advice I received from my teacher was just to recognize the fear that visited me every night and to stop resisting it. To just say hello to it, to welcome it in. This was such a powerful act. I can see now that most of the fear was really the fear of the fear. So when I welcomed it, rather than pushing it away, it vanished like the imaginary monster it was. But I want to make clear to the universe that I am not smug about this accomplishment. I know that I could go back to be a raging insomniac at any moment, and I hope that I can continue to welcome whatever comes.

I am grateful that I no longer work at the newspaper. My former employer is now in the middle of the second big round of cuts since the round in which I was laid off. (And if you remember, there were god-knows-how-many before I was laid off.) They are stuck in a downward spiral that seems to have no end, and I cannot imagine the misery and fear of continuing to work there, continuing to try and persuade yourself that this is OK. No matter how stressful or annoying I sometimes find my current job, it is 1,000 times better than still being stuck where I was a year and a half ago.

I am grateful that my daughter is alive and healthy. Last night we watched the movie "Rabbit Hole," which was very well done but so incredibly depressing. It was about a couple dealing with the death of their 4-year-old son, who ran out into the road chasing his dog. (Only a little close to home.) Their pain was so palpable, so inescapable, that it was awful to watch. But it made me remember to be grateful for my ordinary life. That it is a privilege to wake up before my body is ready and pack lunch and rush her off to school while Mia delays and fights me at every turn. Lately, Mia has been acting like a complete brat, refusing to go to sleep at night, looking for any excuse to sass me, having constant tantrums over nothing, constantly questioning me and demanding things. But despite it all, last night she told me she was practicing for her wedding, and she put a mesh laundry bag over her head and sashayed around wearing nothing but her "veil." And if that isn't enough to remind me that just having her here is is gift, I don't know what is.

I am grateful that my puppy is housetrained. I don't think that needs any further explanation.

I am grateful for these beautiful spring days, for growing plants that have not yet succumbed to the heat and my terrible gardening skills, for the little birds who have nested in my hanging plant, for the clarity of the light and the leaves on the trees and the length of the days.

Today, I am going to remember these things.

Everything seems worse in the middle of the night

Let me start by saying I have a wonderful life. My child is beautiful and joyful. My husband is caring and trustworthy. I have a charming house in a great neighborhood. I get to eat out and take trips and drink good beer. I have work, not quite as much as I want right now, but enough. We own a sailboat, for god's sake. I am fine.  I know that if the only way you knew me was through this blog you would think that I was a whiny miserable person, and maybe that is how people perceive me in real life. Who knows? But for the most part, I really do try my best to be cheerful and kind and grateful for what I have. But this is the spot where I work through the stuff that drives me crazy. So, with that caveat ... let's talk sleep.

Yes, the insomnia continues. And it probably will for the rest of my life. I have accepted that now, two years and three months after it struck me down during what should have been a blissful family vacation. But what I cannot accept is taking an increasing amount of sleeping pills to get to sleep every night for the rest of my life. I have written here before about trying to get off the pills, but I have never achieved it. The fact seems to be, I cannot sleep in bed with my husband without sleeping pills. I have had trouble sleeping with my husband on and off since the insomnia started, but recently it has become more severe.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, it is a baffling problem. Mr. SOC doesn't snore or thrash around or insist on falling asleep to FOX News or any of the things that seem to drive married couples into separate beds. We go to bed about the same time, we have a comfortable queen-sized bed and he has no problem with me leaving the light on and reading for as long as I need. There is no reason why I shouldn't be able to sleep beside him, and for many years we slept happily curled up together in a very small bed. The problem is completely psychological. I can lay there without touching him, with ear plugs in and not a single sound or motion disturbing me, and the same thing happens almost every time. I fall asleep for a few minutes and then jolt awake, and then lie there becoming increasingly anxious while the hours tick away. (For context, I should say that this isn't entirely out of the blue. I had similar problems at sleepovers as a kid, and I still can't sleep on planes or anywhere where strangers might look at me, and I did have one previous serious relationship where I had trouble sharing a bed.)

A few weeks ago, I was taking three to four times the lowest dose of sleeping meds to get to sleep, and even that wasn't working anymore. Every night that I tiptoed out in the dark, carrying my pillows to the guest room, felt like another failure. I felt like I was hurting my husband and ruining my marriage, and I couldn't fix it. Needless to say, when you have those kinds of stakes riding on whether you can fall asleep each night, it doesn't really help your sleep. So after one particularly bad night, I decided that something had to change. I didn't want sleep to have this kind of power over my marriage. So I decided to throw down the white flag and sleep in the guest room indefinitely. I told myself I would wean off the sleeping pills, get myself back into a more normal sleeping pattern and eventually ease back into sleeping like a normal married couple.

Mr. SOC was not at all happy with this plan. He sees sleeping in the same bed as a basic expectation of marriage, one of the building blocks upon which solid unions are built. And I don't necessarily disagree with him. Climbing into bed together at the end of the day is an act of intimacy for which there really is no replacement. It felt sad heading off to our separate rooms each night. It felt like a loss, and maybe one that would lead to other losses. I felt I was doing what I needed to, but not without a significant amount of guilt.

So, when he acted morose for most of the day yesterday and then, at bedtime, asked me how I thought this was ever going to lead to us sharing a bed again, I was struck with a powerful guilt and doubt about my best laid plans. I insisted on coming back into our bed, on toughing it out no matter what. I don't want to be the cause of this hurt. I don't want to make him feel unwanted. I don't want to endanger the most important relationship in my life. I so don't want any of that. And, of course, the night went horribly—even more horribly than usual. At 3 a.m., I had slept only a couple brief snatches, and he retreated into the guest room. I slept until 6 and then woke with a feeling of despair. Our life together is ruined, and it's my fault. And my stupid plan of sleeping separately for a while will probably only make it harder for me to return to our room. Maybe I have screwed things up even worse.

We are a normal married couple with a good bit of stress resting on our shoulders. We have been through a particularly tough patch recently with my mother-in-law, and I have spent a couple months feeling a little low. We have a spirited (and very draining) 5 year old. We are sometimes crabby or stressed about work. We are often wrung out by the end of the day. And like any people who see each other every day, we sometimes take each other for granted. No, we're not the carefree passion-consumed people we were when we first met. But are any of those reasons not to be able to sleep in the same bed?

Of course, the worst part of all this is the fear that it's a Sign. Something is wrong in your marriage!!! it screams. But you know what I want to say to that Sign? Hey, you stupid fucking Sign, could you be a little more specific? Because just being tired and sad, with a side of ominous foreboding? It's not really helping me figure out what needs to be fixed. In fact, if you are a Sign, then you are the most pathetic and mean-spirited excuse for a Sign that has ever roamed the earth!

Regrouping

So, 35, it's not going well so far. Yesterday was my birthday, a day of slate gray skies, unrelenting rain and an ominous feeling of perpetual evening. I was tired from a night of poor sleep. Yes, of course, I couldn't sleep. The night before Thanksgiving, the night before my birthday, any day that I would really like to have fun on, the sleep gremlin comes and smacks me down, teaches me a lesson about anticipation and the silliness of our mortal plans. I had the day off from work, and I had that feeling of being uncomfortable, not sure what to do with myself, wondering what better thing I might have been doing. Food didn't taste good. The sore throat lingered, edging closer and closer to the cold. My parents had arrived in town to find a broken heater in their condo, the very heater that they spent their entire last visit (and their savings account) having fixed. In the afternoon, I was driving up an exit ramp and had to slam on the brakes as someone was coming down it in the wrong direction. We just avoided a head-on collision. And then my parents got a call. Their brother in law had died suddenly. Heart attack. Fell right out of his deer stand in the woods, dead.

I went to bed unsure if or when they were leaving for the funeral, cutting short this long-anticipated visit with Mia and forcing us to cancel our child-free weekend in Charleston. We had already paid a one-night deposit on our hotel, and it seemed unlikely that we would get it back. Plus, I have six days off from work, and instead of spending them visiting with my parents and drinking martinis in Charleston, it appeared that I would spend it at home with a cold and a panicky feeling in my chest. And can you guess what happened when I tried to go to sleep last night? I spent much of the night fighting off panic. Something about that day came together to make me feel absolutely terrified. It felt like a message from the universe that, no, life is not fun. Life is unforeseen tragedies and dashed expectations. It is a hopeless game of trying to veer out of the way of disaster. A game that, in the end, we all lose. My usual meditation couldn't calm my sweating body. I had been so tired all day, and yet sleep would not come. And then the visions of another exhausted day reared up, adding to the misery.

Now here I am. The sun is shining again and the panic has receded. This morning, it was officially decided that my parents are leaving, and we canceled our Charleston reservations for a $50 fee. Yes, I'm still a bit sad about the week I had planned. But at least nothing is up in the air. That feels immensely better. And, actually, I am relieved not to have to go on a romantic getaway with a cold and a killer case of insomnia. I think I'll take this time to regroup, get my worldview back in order. Lately, it feels like there is so much fear in me. A fear that, until recently, I never even knew existed. And I am fighting it, fearing the fear, rather than simply looking at it with an open heart. No, nothing turns out how we plan, everything is out of our control, death can snatch us at any moment. But in between all that, there is joy. There is love and beauty and laughter. There are mountaintops and sparkling lakes and crisp fall afternoons at the park with an ebullient 4-year-old. All of it together, it is life, and I want to open myself to it all. Because trying to fight off the bad parts? That is one battle I am sure to lose.

Now I can't give up on this

I haven't written about my insomnia in ages. I guess it has receded into the background buzz of life. I'm used to it now. But I also haven't written about it because I kind of gave up on the idea of getting off sleeping pills. About six months ago, I just felt I couldn't deal with worrying every night whether I would sleep. I didn't really make a decision, I just took it every night, always thinking, "Just this one more night, and then I'll start cutting back again." I took the more expensive kind when I had free samples, and the cheaper kind when I didn't. And even with the sleeping pills, there were still occasional nights when I couldn't sleep. So I would take more. And then, for my big beach vacation, I was really nervous because it was my big vacation last year when this whole insomnia thing started. So I took some of both, together, and boy did that do the job. I loved that feeling of being completely overtaken by it, of falling into a heavy and uninterrupted sleep. And then I came home, and I realized, if I just take some of both, I really won't have to worry at all. Temptation. And then one night a few weeks ago, even my miracle mixture didn't work. I think that should have been a sign, although I don't know that I heeded it, that taking more and more drugs to get to sleep might not be a good long-term plan.

Around the beginning of this month, I started to feel depressed. Like, checklist of all the symptoms of depression you find on the internet kind of depressed. I didn't enjoy my normal pursuits, not even cooking or eating. (Extremely abnormal for me.) I felt a kind of generalized sadness and anxiety all the time. Communication with others became a misery. I felt uncomfortable, restless, trapped in a world that no longer looked the same. I actually had to run out of a grocery store one day because I felt like I was freaking out. It was scary. I couldn't write about it. I couldn't describe it. I just found a draft post I wrote during that time, and I couldn't publish it. And then something said to me, "It might be those sleeping pills." And I looked them up and, sure enough, both of them listed depression and anxiety as possible side effects. Now, who knows, maybe mixing them together triggered something. Or maybe they had nothing to do with it. But, suddenly, I saw the insanity of taking this cocktail of drugs to sleep every night for months or years on end. Who knows what this stuff could do to me.

So I am newly resolved to get off sleeping pills. And somehow it feels different this time. I don't relish the idea of not sleeping, but I don't feel the panic about it that I used to feel. Maybe I've had time to come to terms with the fact that this is part of my life now. I'm never going to snap back to being the person before insomnia. This is not something that I'm going to "conquer" or "leave behind." It's something I have to live with. I also think it's something that has prompted me to live more skillfully. It inspired me to start meditating, a practice that has given me mental discipline. I no longer lie down with an anxious cycle of thoughts running through my head. (It used to go something like, What should I think about? How can I distract myself? What if I don't fall asleep? No! Don't think about that. Don't! Oh shit. It's happening again. FUCK!!! MY LIFE IS RUINED!!!) I know how to feel my breath and defuse unproductive, fearful thoughts. I know how to focus on what is here and now and say to myself, "I'm aware of the fear. I smile to the fear." I am stunned at how calming that is, to just sit quietly and feel the weight in my chest, acknowledge it, defuse its power.

This is not to say I have it all figured out. I still haven't slept a night without sleeping pills. I've quit taking the expensive stuff, and I am down to half a tablet of the cheap stuff. As soon as I can work up the courage, I'm going to go down to a quarter. Maybe tonight? I am still afraid, but I think the consequences of not doing this could be greater than I am willing to bear.

Words from my dark place

Maybe if I can just slap some words over all this dread and fear, it would help. So even though I feel like I can't do it, I'm going to try.

Things I am afraid of:

• That working here is going to drive me crazy. I feel crazy right now, I really do.
• That I'm going to be laid off.
• That I'm never going to find another job. 
• That I am absolutely, positively, unemployable outside of this place.
• That, without my income, we will have to sell our house.
• That I live in a world that no longer has any use for people like me.
• That I am lost, and I will never find my way.
• That our country, our economy, our world are broken beyond repair.
• That I'm not going to sleep tonight.
• That I am depressed.
• That I am headed for some kind of mental breakdown.
• That I am ruining other people's lives with my anxiety and depression and insomnia.

Things I need to remember:

• That, unlike many of the people on this sinking ship of a company, my husband has a good job that will allow us to live a good, middle-class life even if I lose my job. (No, we probably can't afford our house without some kind of income from me, but we won't starve or have to move to the projects.)
• That the economy will get better one day.
• That this situation is temporary. Someday, somehow, I will find my way out of this stuck place.
• That I am valuable.
• That my situation is only intolerable inside my own head. In every rational respect, I am perfectly OK.

Last night, I hardly slept. I'm working the fucking night-shift this week--I now have to do it one out of every nine weeks--and it's got my very delicate sleep schedule out of whack. And I lay there in the dark feeling like my chest was squeezing, crumpling. And I kept thinking, I'm stuck in a work situation that is intolerable. I can't stand it anymore. And there's no way out. None of the masses of people that our company has laid off this year have found full-time work in this area. Not a single one. So I am trapped working at this place that is making me crazy. I'm not emotionally capable of continuing to work there, but I have no choice. I felt like I was going to die or go nuts or I don't even know what.

Today, I came to work and our boss told us that it's looking like we're going to have to make lots more severe cuts next year. He told us all to start getting prepared. The tone of his voice and the look in his eye said, "We are fucked. We are hanging on by a thread. There is no hope." I'm not sure what preparations I'm supposed to be making. I feel overwhelmed, powerless, lost, adrift in an endless ocean. I know that someday I will look back and see how close I was to shore, how everything really was OK. That I had my family and my health and my (relative) youth and all the things that really mattered. But right now I can't see it. I can't see the horizon from here, and I am scared.

I need to focus on what's right here and now. Telling myself stories about a better future is not going to help. Right now, I have air to breathe and food to eat. Right now, I have a steady income. Right now, I have a beautiful, happy daughter. Right now, I have a husband who loves me. Right now, I have lots of vacation time. Right now, I get to go home every night to my family. Right now, I am healthy. Right now, there is a beer in the refrigerator waiting for me. Right now, I am going to leave work and go home and try to breathe.

One of those days

Today I am full of fear. No particular tragedy has befallen me; it's just that some days the vulnerability of being alive comes to rest on my shoulders and I am trapped. It started two nights ago, when I woke from a nightmare that my mother had been diagnosed with some kind of terminal brain disease. The fear of that dream stayed with me through the day, infusing everything (including Mia's school dropoff) with a sense of doom. I had hoped that today would be a fresh start, but instead I woke at 5 a.m. to go to the bathroom and was gripped by the fear that my mother is going to die. It spiraled outward from there. What will her death do to Mia? And maybe I've made the wrong choice not to give Mia a sibling, because all the people who love her are OLD and they're all going to DIE and what if she ends up all ALONE? Maybe I could talk to her older half-brothers, ask them to befriend her if this happens. Can she ever be close to them with such a huge age difference? I eventually fell back into a fitful sleep, from which I woke tired and full of a sort of generalized dread. And here I am.

Lately, I feel completely raw, open to the world. In one sense it is joyful, but in another it is terrifying. When you are aware that anything could happen at any moment, that you control none of it, it makes you look at things differently. Sometimes, it leads my mind down a dark path. I'm hoping I'll break into a clearing soon.

Lower the stakes

Oh, hell. There are so many things I want to post here. But it seems I never even have 15 minutes of free time anymore to sit and collect my thoughts. Mia demands every second of my attention when I am with her, every millisecond of it, to the point where I sometimes feel I am in prison. She is an amazingly sadistic jailer. And then there is my damned job I have to do, and the chores, the meditation attempts, the trips to the gym. And always, always, the dinner, the dishes and the grocery shopping. I love to cook, but sometimes it feels like keeping ourselves fed is an endless grind. On top of it all is the Spanish class I'm starting this week, and the applying for jobs (yes, I'm at it again), and the developing of business plans, and then becoming discouraged about said business plans, and the wasting time on the computer. Oh, and the time spent worrying about whether I'll sleep at night. That's a lot of time these days, a lot.

Years ago, it feels like, I was planning to write this post called "Overcoming Insomnia." That was probably more than a month ago, when I slept for 12 straight nights without any pharmaceutical aids, and I thought I had a shot at sleeping like a normal person again. But that is behind me now, so far behind me. And the idea that I ever thought I could give advice about coping with insomnia is laughable. But, BUT, maybe writing some of that stuff down would help me remember it. Maybe I should give myself a little talking to. So here goes, in the brief stolen moments I have right now.

The other night, as the old nighttime anxiety crept in, these words flashed into my brain and took hold: Lower the stakes. Lower the stakes! When I am in a bad stretch, it feels as if not sleeping is the end of the world. It means that my life is ruined, all of it, that I am officially damaged, broken, living a life that is not the one I wanted. "It's like having a chronic disease," I tell myself, "having to feel like shit from lack of sleep several days a week. This is as bad as cancer. I might as well go ahead and die!!!" But with those words — lower the stakes — I felt a flash of reason creeping in. What does it mean to get a crappy night's sleep? This is not life or death stuff. It's just one day of feeling tired. It's not that big a deal, forgodssake. Get a grip.

I have survived many tired days before, and most of them aren't even necessarily worse than well-rested days. On tired days, I don't allow myself to stress about my larger goals. I don't tend to fall into funks about the meaning of life. I focus on accomplishing the necessary tasks, and I am often rather productive, because I become a sort of cheerleader for myself. Anything I do is a victory on tired days. And the feeling I get in the evening, when I have made it through, when I know I've done it, is close to bliss.

I also need to get out of the rigid mindset of "must sleep from 11:30 to 7:30." If I am awake during that time, I make it a misery for myself, worrying about how many hours are left, how tired I will be the next day. Instead, I should be thankful, for a bit of the alone time I crave during my busy days, for time to read a book, to write on this blog, to sit quietly in the dark and breathe. Yes, there may be a small price to pay the next day, the no-sleep headache and the heavy tired body, but if I play my cards right, I could make my wakeful night hours a lovely time that is worth the sacrifice.

And lastly, there is always the sleeping pill. I need to lower the stakes on that too. If I need them to avoid getting into a crazy cycle of not sleeping for days, I have them. I have gotten myself into this stressed out cycle of worrying about their cost, and telling myself that I cannot take them, and then freaking out about the idea of not being able to sleep without them, and then freaking out because I cannot afford them... It goes on and on. But the fact is, even if the only option is to buy them at full price (and that's not the only option) and take them every single night, it's $75 a month. No, I don't want to spend $75 a month on fucking sleeping pills. But if I have to, I can. It's just $75 a month. That figure feels so much less powerful when I see it on the page. It is not a number worth sitting up nights worrying about.

I've always thought of my life as completely linear. This moment leads to the next, and so we spend every moment worrying about the next, until all our moments have passed us by. Really, it's all just a succession of moments. And we can choose to embrace them for what they are — to accept that there will always be problems, that things are not supposed to be be any certain way — or we can spend them wishing for some mythical existence in which everything is as we want it to be. When I put it like that, the choice seems obvious. I choose to lower the stakes.

Midnight rambler

I've been plotting this post in which I say, Guess what???!!! I've slept without a sleeping pill for an entire week! I am finally putting that little insomnia incident behind me. Yes, it took eight months, but I am no pussy. I was not going to let that shit beat me. I win! I am woman, hear me roar! ...

But I made it to four nights, and now here I am on the couch. It's night two of not sleeping and, after tossing and turning for long enough that I could tell it wasn't going to happen, taking the damned pill. Sigh. I had pretty much decided that, if I needed a little pill with no side effects to sleep normally, that there really were much bigger problems in life. I was just going to accept it. But then, after a couple months of getting by on my doctor's generous bags of free samples, I went to the pharmacy to fill the prescription for the new pills she put me on. And it was $50 for 20 pills. That works out to $2.50 a day. No fucking way. So my resolve to get off them was renewed. And I've done surprisingly well. Until the past couple nights, when I am back to my old tricks again. Very disappointing, but I should not be worrying about it because...

I gave up worrying for lent. I wasn't going to give up anything this year, but then I was on facebook and I happened to see a comment from a guy who said he was giving up paying the mortgage and going to work. Obviously, that was a joke, but it inspired me to quip back. "Great idea, I think I'll give up worrying." And then I was struck by a bolt of lightning. What if I really did give up worrying for lent? Of course, a life without worry is impossible. But what if you just gave yourself permission not to do it for a set period of time? Anything stressful happens and you just say, well, fuck it, I'm not allowed to worry right now. And maybe I finish lent with the realization that worry has been accomplishing nothing in my life, that I can let go of it and still function in the world. That I can have a problem, and I can seek a solution to that problem, without obsessively worrying over it.

I think we all (or at least I) go around with the impression that worry is somehow necessary to life, that it  keeps you safe and keeps you moving and looking for solutions. I mean, only acid-crazed hippies who live on the beach and root through dumpsters for food don't worry, right? Worry is what separates us from the apes — and the losers. But I think the reality is that all it does is weigh us down. I can not sleep and piss and moan and work myself into a state about how tired I'm going to be tomorrow. Or I can just sit here quietly and say, well, my body doesn't want to sleep. So let's write that rambling nonsensical blog post I've been meaning to put up. So I have a chronic insomnia problem. So fucking what. More time for reading, writing bullshit on the internet, medidating. Ha! Take that, insomnia.

Obviously, I'm not achieving my goal entirely because I would probably be sleeping right now if I hadn't allowed worries about whether I was going to be able to sleep to creep in. But I'm doing my best. And tomorrow, I plan to have a little ceremony wherein I release my worries to the universe, and I'm planning to write about it here and even include a photograph (my first blog photograph!) of my silly little ritual. But it's only silly if you believe it is, so I think I'll call it a Profound and Life Changing Ritual.

OK, this is becoming less coherent by the minute so I'm going to cut it off here. It is paining me not to have a pithy ending, but the harder I try for one the more addled I begin to sound. So I ... (gets pulled offstage by giant hook.)

Sleep, I will never take you for granted. Just come back to me.

I was so excited to leave my shitty week behind and have a lovely fall weekend. Haven't I learned by now that anticipation is a curse? For the past three nights, my old friend insomnia has returned, and getting to sleep has involved about three hours of tossing and turning and fast heartbeats and angry thoughts and, one night, uncontrollable crying. All I want is to lie down and sleep and wake up rested, rather than waking up anxious about another tired day, fighting a headache and having to gulp down coffee and push myself to even move. This is not how it's supposed to be!

I lie there in the night telling myself that non-resistance is the key to happiness, that I must accept what is, that I need to make a friend of the present moment, in which I am safe and warm, even if I am not sleeping —— and then, FUCK!!! WHY CAN'T I JUST FUCKING GO TO SLEEP??? I DON'T WANT TO BE TIRED AGAIN. THIS SHOULDN'T BE HAPPENING. WHY ME????? FUCK!!!!!! Nothing more fun than a night of battling back despair. What makes this most disappointing is that I had been weaning myself off of sleeping medication for weeks. I had been on a very low dose and had even done my first night of no medication, and things were going great. And now it feels like I am starting over. Why doesn't my body let me sleep anymore?

Despite my fatigue, I was insistent on carrying out my plan to take Mia to the pumpkin farm yesterday. Insomnia or no, we were not going to miss out on fall fun. Well, we drove an hour and spent $30 on admission to the pumpkin "farm," which was a cheesy crowded hellhole with paved pathways and some store-bought pumpkins thrown in the grass and people carrying inflatable prizes and eating over-priced funnel cakes and fast food and a pond whose water was actually dyed blue. Who do they think they are fooling? This is the pumpkin "farm" where everyone around here goes. What the fuck is wrong with people? Never again. As we got in the car and left, Mia said, "That didn't feel fun." Probably because we spent more time waiting in line than anything else.

But we did have a lovely family dinner last night, and we took a bike ride this morning and ate lunch on the porch and it is a beautiful fall day and, if I can get my act together, we're going to have this for dinner.