Sleep

Ah, sleep. Remember when you were little and you would fight like a demon to stay awake? Reading by flashlight? In the summer we stayed up all night - our parents gave up. Our bedroom windows faced the neighbor's windows, The Palominos. On warm summer nights we would spend evenings hanging out the windows chatting about everything and being silly, getting occasionally shushed but we would talk til we passed out. Make us go to bed? Never!

And here I am as an adult stuck in the no man's land. I welcome sleep most nights, nothing quite as joyous as pulling up the covers and drifting off. Only to be awakened at 10. At 1. Often 3:30am finds me reading - thank goodness for my ereader which is the space age version of my old dependable flashlight I suppose. What keeps me up? Arthritis in my neck - there is nothing quite so invigorating as severe pain from lying in the wrong position, or a few spasms will make you come alive. My neck is the worst, I'm sure exacerbated by the 800 or more miles I drive each week, followed by my shoulder and knees. And then of course there's my old friend

Screaming Anxiety or as I've always thought of her, the 2 AM Girl. She shows up in the middle of the night as you're sleeping hard and cheerfully whispers such gems as "I HOPE YOU DON'T LOSE ALL YOUR MONEY AND DIE POOR".  or "DO YOU THINK YOUR KIDS ARE ALRIGHT? YOU HAVEN'T HEARD FROM THEM IN AWHILE" sometimes she paralyzes me, I can actually feel my anxiety tightening, It's very delightful. Of course when dawn comes her power fades and I realize how silly my worries - that seemed so overpowering in the middle of the night - are only small things. And sometimes I just cannot sleep. And I hate that, watching the clock, saying each hour, three more hours til I have to get up. two more hours til I have to get up.....ah well. Goodnight. I hope.