Humanity

Sleep, and not having it.

What happens to me if I can’t get good sleep? For a week or so? Never twice in a row even!? (i have since gotten a couple good nights in..hence, ability to write somewhat coherently.

  • I cry before work and don’t know why
  • I change my clothes more than once in the mornings and look like a homeless person who wandered into a school- no one has said anything yet. I’m just not coherent, and my ‘I don’t care’ is high. Just put on another sweater, it’ll all work out.
  • I dread bed, no matter how tired I am or if the honey man is up there.
  • My patience… oh wherefor art thou?
  • My eyes get smaller and smaller and I squint at the world.
  • I fake it and fake it and fake it and start looking for a therapist with more determination because those who love me are commenting on my rawness. they are not buying into the fakery.
  • Thin skin means issues rise to the surface. No longer contained.
  • Good goddamned. I’m calling it boredom, but I think it’s the distractability of the sleep deprived. I’m getting bored with things that are different every single day, and it doesn’t make any sense. Boredom is a little dangerous for me. things will start to happen.
  • I lie in bed, exhausted, and just lie there. eyes closed, brain clicking along like a train on a track, nothing to resolve, nothing resolved, just click after click after click.

I definitely know that there are people with SERIOUS sleep issues, and I think mine is temporary, and so there, it is said. But good goddamn. I am so tired. Is this just the fifties for women? Really? Maybe. the ‘fucks to be given’ are leaving, if not gone entirely, and I’m relying on the world around me to adjust. Good idea? mm.

with slight concern, but only slight because i mean, who cares about my goddamned sleep, really? I mean, not even me.

I’ll get it done anyways. this is a clear ‘whatever’ situation and mood.

love love,

kate

ps. Maybe sleep is affecting my positivity? How you like me now?! Huh? Huh?

Yeah. It’s good.
Humanity

I do not know

Second birthday is done now. Onto the Christmas thing.

Just made three different kinds of cookies to give as gifts. It was hours in the kitchen and I gave up on holding onto my sanity and it went right out the front door. I watched it go, that skanky bitch. She had a fucking swagger, she did.

My eyes are dry and I’m slightly sticky from all the sugar. I don’t know, man. Its a chance to say thank you to people, to show them a little generosity: of time, of thought, sometimes of money. I like it, actually, but not the wild stampede of my guilt and overwhelm as I try to fit in all the things and the planning and the grocery. Its all the steps that get me, the ways in which I am overwhelmed three weeks before the thing, the way my brain carves a groove in the ‘is this worth it’ platter holding the cheeses we’ll eat on the Eve.

My kids have Christmas with their dad the day before they have it with me. Mine is smaller this year than it ever has been and I’m just so done with all the things I think about that. Man, I need a good therapist, and I’m just so damn mad at myself that I am still falling into old patterns, ones which I’ve already tired out a few therapists with. OOOOLD news. so fucking old.

I don’t even care about them anymore, those old pieces of shit, to tell you the truth. But they come up AGAIN with the overwhelm and the fear that I’m not doing enough, that I’m not appreciated, that maybe I’m still invisible, like I was then.

so shit. i do not know. and here i am, all cookie-d out. and i look forward to giving them out tomorrow. I have to be in early, and its cozy day, so i’m just wearing a gigantic sweatshirt that almost comes to my ankles. I may not ‘rally’ and ‘be lively’. I predict a sort-of dazed experience of the day.

Love you guys. Be merry if you want to. 🙂

Cookies! So many goddamned cookies.

Humanity

sick days-time limit

i’m haunted by food that is in the fridge. that chicken, could you cook it for me so it doesn’t go bad? i just cannot move. My nose is Gerard Depardieu.

I watched Last Holiday last night. Bob is a good egg to do it with me. (secretly he appreciated it tons. LL COOL J AND QUEEN LATIFAH? joy and extravagance? COME ON.)

there’s a timeline. this all has to go away in the next twelve hours because i haven’t been there long enough to have a sick day.

my middle child is the one of them who is not a good patient. tending him last night was one of those bitter moments when you realize your humanity is overriding the mother-bit. Being sick myself made it a hard one. but his fever broke sometime in the night and he was sweetly sweaty this morning and he will be 18 tomorrow and well. He was my easiest birth, and it was 18 years ago. dang.

Its been a doozy so far this year. I thought I’d gotten so much better with the divorce/shared parenting thing but this year has definitely shown me my flaws. Bitter bleeding pain moments at the kids being absent from me are occurring. I mean… ouch stuff. the right word is PIERCING.

the holidays and birthdays are always a ‘too much’ time for me, but this year I have wept, and I don’t recover as quickly as I’d like. My monkey mind is full of competitions and loss, and ‘well, fine, I’m wrapping the socks, we’re just going to have popcorn and I’ll leave all the presents to the rich dad and stepmom. Because I cannot win.’

And I still spend too much, and wrestle with my savings account. And it uncovers the part of me that really does watch the competition and try to participate. And believe it or not, as un-American as it is, I am aware that competition is out of place, and a full-on negative for me. but there it is. it appears anyhow.

I’ve done christmas by myself for my whole life with my kids. (like most moms) Do they know that? No. It is not just the two houses that makes it tough. Its a much bigger issue of feeling unseen and unappreciated. I was asked to move ‘things’ because of the stress the stepmom was feeling. So now there is a second woman overwhelmed and stressed by the season. (and yes, i wept, because goddamnit, this is my role, not anyone else’s and how dare their dad allow it to happen to someone else. isn’t one enough? ((and what the fuck does he DO?)) )

and then we go back to the chicken in the fridge and the need to cook for all the people. and the one home from college who fell asleep at 7 am.

Its a cheap, falling-apart wicker basket of emotions over here. And it better be all done in the next 12 hours. Thats it.

time limit.

person holding white tissue paper
Photo by cottonbro studio on Pexels.com
Humanity

Sunday, I slept til 8:30 am, a miracle.

Sleep.

a miracle. my head is a little foggy, but there is coffee nearby, and a kid with a tiny tv in her lap. the table is cluttered again, as is regular, and there is a christmas tree bowling set-up, an empty water bottle on its side and an unattached cord, a wide fat white candle, two empty glasses and a box of magic cards. every chair has something on it. a scarf, a stolen coat, a gifted denim shirt, and a pretty brown bag that used to have dumplings in it. it is quite lovely really, that bag, especially for a bag that is explicitly for ‘take away’. i love it when the mundane are treated with craft and meaning.

i’m not sure what i came here to write about today, just know that i needed to. i’ve finished a book lately, Ottessa Moshfegh’s My Year of Rest and Relaxation, and it was wildly familiar, while being utterly separate from any experience I’ve ever had. Maybe as a former sidecar to an alcoholic, I recognize it? Maybe its my dream of escape returning, that young mother’s delusional dream? The main character willfully and determinedly tries to drug herself into sleep for a year, in the sincere hopes that when the sleep is done, there will be clarity, blueberries at the end of the rainbow and such. The names of the pills were mostly foreign to me, but I sure do know that my alarm bells will ring if anyone ever mentions any of them to me. but the dream of somehow waking up? a true deep waking up? oh yes. I feel that dream, have lived that one.

maybe that’s what sleeping is all about, for me. the hope for the waking up well-rested, the clarity of mind and purpose. the appreciation of the coffee and the clutter with an uncluttered mind.

and then again, maybe sleeping is just about sleeping. resting. breaking the mind from its yoke.

I guess thats what i came here for, to talk miracles, and waking up, and sleeping. I’m not going to lie, I’m not sure what you’ll make of it. but i’m here for it, still a little bit groggy, because the wakeup was unclear. Definitely cluttered. Its a beginning, and there is alot more. Dare I mention the yoke of ‘woke’? HAAAAA. i dared, and it felt awful, and I’m sorry. But my grimace is heading towards light-hearted on that one, sort of. ugh. sorry.

what’re your daily miracles? How do you wake up in the morning? What is your sleep like? what are the waking dreams?

Humanity

so much

bob made it through an open heart episode. A surgery in which he was laid bare. Incredible things. He lived here for a month, poor babe. My former father in law died. I spent a lot of time with that family as they moved through the days. I had to stop doing that. My friend told me that i wasn’t grounded because i was a faerie, and what about that. and i went to quaker meeting today because my son led me back. there is earth and spirit everywhere you look.

i’ve been thinking in posts and wounding myself because i don’t write anymore, so here i am, while ducking another responsibility. I don’t know, maybe i’ll just never figure it all out. its birthday/holiday/too much time right now and i’m buckling in and down and hiding behind bob’s right arm pretty regularly. just get through it. dirt and air.

its very windy. i have brussels sprouts waiting for me in the fridge. i am making hamburger helper tonight, poor children. (your mother needs comfort food.) i’ve stopped eating bags and bags of candy and it is so good, but i am full of craven craves. Also, the whole heart thing means a whole never ever approach to cigarettes, which are a very bad but enjoyable reprieve from clean air and responsibility.

things are stirred up, dust and ash, and I’m glancing out, with my hair in Viking braids, either waiting to kill something, or maybe just yell into the wind. but there is blood in my mouth, and i don’t know what that means.

see? so much.

love you, and have missed you.

kate

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