Feed me
22 June 2011 05:40 AM Categories: Quotidian existence | Insomnia
Actually, today there will be an escape. Back when I thought I had my career counselor meeting today, I scheduled a babysitter to watch the boy in the morning. He's not so sick that he needs me by his side constantly (though I will call the doctor about this fever thing). Even though my meeting was yesterday -- a meeting I ended up having on the phone -- I am still getting out of the house today. I am going to wander the sidewalks. I am going to get a pedicure. I am eating lunch in the open air and sunshine.
Here's what I've been up to: going through boxes of maternity clothes and things from early baby life. Reminiscing about long thin interrupted nights, the struggles to feed, remembering the worries about milk leakage during my rare forays into the world, all the other women in my moms' group checking for tell-tale spots on each other's nursing tops. I'm finally selling the cloth diapers from those sleep-deprived early months, the hallucinatory nights followed by zombie mornings. I talk to pregnant women on the phone, women who are as confused as I was about the complicated world of cloth. I've listed baby carriers on craigslist and I've cleaned up the miracle blanket for sale, that swaddling cloth that the boy absolutely hated.
I wake up way too early or in the middle of the night, Nick the cat howling for the streets, the boy's burning feet resting on my calves. I've been trying, and probably not succeeding, to eat enough. The antidepressants suppress my appetite (in addition to causing insomnia, though my current bout is more complicated than that -- think it might be time to actively encourage the boy to stay in his own bed all night) and I'm pretty sure I've lost a few pounds, not that I had it to lose. I am trim and model thin and, despite the four a.m. catcalls that pull me out of bed, I continue to function, though my mind is slowly slip, slip, slipping away.
I want to escape all of this through writing something transcendent, amazing, lyrical, but I don't have it in me right now. I attempt to escape through fantasy, through my imagination, but the scenarios I come up with taunt me, they leer with knowledge of what I can't have and what I should be focusing on instead. I know this is a blip in my life, that all will be well soon, but that doesn't stop me from feeling weary and whiny.
So I complain to you. I anticipate our four day weekend off the grid, my computer resting at home, my cell phone hibernating in the glove compartment. We'll sleep under the stars, under mosquito netting. We'll splash in the water and hike the trail. Maybe without cats or computers or digital clocks, without many obligations to drag me away, with the boy safely tucked in his own cot, I will sleep. I will gather ideas, snippets of conversation and snatches of sunlight.
The balance will tip. I will be satiated, full up on life.
Hipstamatic image of my hair and the front window by me.
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