Sleepless

I can't sleep tonight. I have all these unhappy, dark thoughts running through my brain, and lying in bed just gives them free reign.

See, every night, falling asleep is a chore for me. It's never one of those "close your eyes and you're out" deals unless I'm medicated heavily or exhausted to the point of dropping. Usually, though, it's just this random stream of consciousness - conversations with myself that I, at some point in the process, find myself thinking, "Hey, wait, how'd we get here?" And then, after about 15-20 minutes of that, I finally drift off.

When there's darker, heavier things on my mind, though, it's not so benign. Sure, I still do the stream of consciousness thing, but instead of the usual, "Hmmm... This pillow's soft. I like soft things. Bunnies are soft. So are llamas. I petted a llama once. I wonder if I could have a llama as a pet in this sub-division....." it becomes, "Grrrr! He makes me so mad! Why can't he understand that I need someone to lean on!!?? Wait, maybe he's just tired of being the one I lean on. Who knows what's going to happen next? I mean, sure, this won't kill me, but what if I have to have surgery? And what if the surgery goes wrong? What if I don't make it.Well, you know, that might be easier on him, anyway. Then he wouldn't have to put up with dealing with a sick woman who projects her fear and anger into other places...." and on and on and on it goes. And as that stream continues, I just get more and more agitated and sad, until next thing you know, I'm lying there shaking, pissed, sad and crying, and feeling even worse because, of course, everyone is asleep, so I'm alone. Again.

So I do what I'm doing now. I get up. I get out of the bed, put on some clothes, come into the living room and sit down at my computer. And I desperately wish that someone would come to me, hold me, tell me it's okay. But they don't. So I sleep in my chair. Alone.

Good lord, I'm depressing. And I swear, it feels like all I ever blog is sad and negative and depressing. But really, I'm not compelled to blog when I'm feeling good, when my mood is happy. It's only when I'm alone in the dark that I'm compelled to come here and compose my prose.

Then, after I hit "publish," I feel guilty. Really, I'm not trying to garner sympathy. As a matter of fact, I freaking HATE sympathy. Seriously, I do. I would kill for a minute amount of compassion from those closest to me right now, but I don't want sympathy. I don't want pity. I want understanding. And support. And empathy (which is a different animal altogether from sympathy, by the way).

And I know - Jeff is going to tell me how much he cares, and Marikay will too, because they've been in similar spots, and they understand being in the dark. And others of you will tell me that you care and you love me and all the other nice things you say. And I'll read those words, and I'll cry. And then the guilt will come back, because that's not why I wrote this.

Really, I'm writing this so I can sleep. So that I can get the ugly thoughts out of my brain so that I can close my eyes and just see darkness, not black. I'm writing to purge these feelings from myself for a little while, to put them into a penseive so that they will leave me alone for a bit. Tomorrow things will likely be better. Well, except that Hans will still be upset with me, and that little tiff will not have been resolved. But he'll pretend like nothing ever happened, and I'll bottle it up until I can't hold any more again....