3 a.m. thoughts / 10 a.m. rethink
11 September 2011 10:41 AM Categories: Insomnia
I heard an interview with a former dominatrix once. She got herself through school and a heroin habit by working in a hidden space in New York, putting the men down or dressing them up. She kicked the habit and left the job. Got her MFA. Now she’s got a book and a job teaching writing.
She spoke compassionately about her clients, men hungry for fantasy, for touch, and I thought to myself: that’s what I need! I need to hire a man, a stranger, to hug me and listen to me and tell me good things about myself. He could make cluckclucking noises when I say things that don’t make any sense, when I fight against myself. I could cry in his arms and he would hold me, no risk, no embarrassing aftermath, no need to wonder if I’d gone down the wrong path or what was wrong with me and I wouldn’t need to be involved in his mess, either, right?
Maybe afterwards he would go home to his apartment, to the dog or the no-dog, to his wife or boyfriend or girlfriend or to no one at all. He would be a cocktail drinker or a beer drinker or a teetotaler. In my mind he would exist free and clear of any other connections.
Can I tug on your sleeve? Would you notice it? I will get no satisfaction out of this, none at all, and I don’t want to direct my anger where there is no place.
I am on the precipice of a decision, of a big change and I want to hold on to something. Think of me on the ledge of a building, fifteen stories up, and the air up there is cold. It’s early morning (I’ve chosen a time when no one would notice me, or, more accurately, I don’t have to wonder if someone notices me in my desperation to be noticed). I am wearing a short-sleeved shirt over shorts. My feet are bare. I tremble as the sun lends a tinge of daylight. I can’t even see the ground, it’s that foggy.
I turn to the open window, to the billowing curtains and the screen ajar. I want to hold on to something. I want to see an arm reaching for me, I want to see a crowd below, and then I realize I chose wrong, I always do. There will be no one there.
Is it me? It is always me. The wrong choices, the wrong revelations, the wrong needs. But I am on the ledge, waiting for the non-existent concerned stranger, and I realize that I can take the stairs, that I can walk back into the room and then out of the room. I can shut the door quietly and tiptoe down the hall, down the stairs and out that door. There are people out there who might welcome me, who would notice and listen. People who are able to be present.
There will be no phone call for a stranger’s touch. I can separate out me from the people who don’t hear me, who can’t, and someday this knot inside of me will unravel, I will untie it, and hold myself against myself and tell myself that I am fine, fine, good even.
Or maybe all I need is a night of blissful, uninterrupted sleep.
10:00 a.m. rethink
Despite my insomnia, the four hours of sleep followed by three hours of wakefulness, followed by a fitful nap until the dawn crept in, my heart still pounding (it’s pounding now, it is), I am in a remarkably good mood. Despite the crumbling of my life around me and despite the fact that I still have to battle myself, my feelings of impossible neediness, despite my occasional bouts of insanity, I am here, I am talking and thinking and feeling.
I have resolutions. One, cut out the drinking, which ratcheted up with my mother's visit (tapering off because apparently quitting cold turkey when you’re on Wellbutrin means an increased chance of seizure). Two, think of the future while not holding it too dear. Three, speak the truth, my truth, without worrying how other people will interpret it or take it away from me. Four, stick with the no internet after 8:00 p.m. thing in order to keep a calm mind. Four, be connected to the world, aware, in touch.
But there is the lack of sleep, the fact that my brain is slow as honey, but not as sweet, and the fact that the husband will be going in for surgery tomorrow or Tuesday and I’ll be on, all parent, responsible for everything for the next week or so, dealing with the fact that I still haven’t dealt with things that would make our lives easier. Like driving. I don’t do it and the husband will have to get himself to the hospital and back and I’ll have to walk the kid or depend on the kindness of other people (and my willingness to ask) to help us get to school quickly and all of it makes my heart beat faster and I feel so guilty so guilty for being me, with all my unsavory problems and my strange attachments.
Still, within this, the tears of exhaustion and acknowledgement, I don’t feel … bad. The feelings are tolerable, though I don’t want to linger too long, and I am lifting the burden and I am ready to be honest, in place. I am even willing to figure out how to communicate in the face of loss. I see how it is vital and sometimes I can imagine how I am lovable, maybe even interesting, and then I think: therapy. I need years of this stuff, I need to drink it down, to mainline it, and it isn’t just talk, it’s work, it’s years of trying and not hiding.
I’ve only just begun.
The bed is calling me again. I am sitting on her, actually, in this guest room where I will presumably get more sleep. I spent a lot of time in this room last winter and I’m not sure what I think of it anymore, with its dark walls and its air of melancholy and its permanently closed door. I turned it into a prison once and I don’t want to do that again, to let it pull me deeper into the place where there is no light and I have no future. Surely it isn’t the rooms fault, it is what I bring to it, my expectations. I have to change my expectations, too, and I am, the wheels are turning and aren’t we all wonderful, even behind the masks that hide our fears?
Written in two rushes, one in the middle of the night, one in the morning. Not a sign of quality writing, of course.
Thanks to rcb for being there.
Image by kloppster.
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