Running in place

I haven't been so good at keeping up with the myriad details of my everyday life. I doubt this is a surprise to anyone. Bills, picking up, cleaning, phone calls, record-keeping, even getting together with friends — all of this has been difficult if not impossible for me in the past months.

I've even found it difficult to keep up with my therapy homework. Three hours ago, I started my homework for tomorrow ... and then spent two hours on the phone with one of my best friends. Talking with my friend was terrific; we haven't talked in a few weeks. But now it's after 10 pm and I should finish things up and go to bed.

.... Who the hell am I kidding? I haven't gone to bed before 2:30 in months. Often I'm up until 4 am (Hey Julie! ::waves::). Unfortunately I don't spend my time doing anything useful in any way.

My sleep schedule became completely fucked up in 2007, after my cat died. In the aftermath of the death of my companion of over a decade, I realized how much more she was to me than simply one of my most-loved companions. She was also my security system. If I woke in the night —a not-unusual occurrence — I'd automatically look to her. If she was asleep, or simply looking back at me as if wondering why I weren't asleep as I should be, I could lay my head back on my pillow and drop off easily. But if she were looking about alertly, then I had to get up and walk the house. Once I thought I saw someone in the back yard and I called the police. Several other times it was deer in the back yard; it is quite disturbing to carefully pull a curtain aside to look out ... and see a long deer face looking back at you! I was definitely the more startled.

After my furry security system died, I routinely woke in a drenching sweat from dreams of gangs of intruders hunting me down in my home. The sleeping pills my doctor gave me made the nightmares worse, so I quit them and began staying up later and later. To occupy myself during the late hours, I built a highly detailed imaginary life and I whiled away the hours between 9 pm and 3 am with this life, with listening to Vonda Shepards "Maryland,"and with watching the moon wash across my bed and the floor in the next room. It was pleasant.

Now I have no place that is washed by the moon and my heart is once more broken, even worse than before. I don't currently have anything to look forward to in the morning, or in the moment after that, or the moment after that, so I stay up, surfing the same sites over and over, and running in place in the hope that the next moment doesn't come any sooner.