I can't sleep...

Got my final check yesterday. This gets more and more real and I feel like my corner is already getting smaller. This is the really, real world now and I’m a little freaked out tonight. I spent over an hour at the office today picking up my check and getting it corrected (of course it was incorrect – how could it not have been?) and, as I was leaving, I felt the need to be sure I never walk in there again…if not never, no time soon. Didn’t I say I was going to stop writing about this?

Anyway, something occurred to me tonight as I was trying to go to sleep and I had to get out of bed, smoke a cigarette and talk to myself for awhile before I sat down to write this. I don’t think I’ve really ever gone into how I make these sort of self-discoveries and I don’t know that it’s of any interest to anyone else but – well, this is about me so…here it is. I talk to myself – all the time. I swear I can only turn my brain off when I’m reading or watching movies or talking with other people. Which I guess sort of explains my obsessions with these things – especially when I’m having trouble working something out or when I’m afraid or am unwilling to follow the course of action I think is probably the best for me. Distraction at its most…useless, ultimately, I suppose. So, anyway, I have this ongoing, never-ending conversation going in my head and sometimes, I can’t turn it off. It’s the reason I’ll sometimes say things that are in no way connected to the conversation going on outside. It’s also the reason I can’t sleep sometimes – I can’t stop thinking, can’t stop the conversation long enough to rest in any sort of useful way. I haven’t been sleeping much at night this past week and, I suspect, this is going to continue for awhile – I can feel that I’m headed back into an insomnia cycle. I wonder if other people do this? I can’t believe this is in any way a unique feature – you know?

A part of this conversation has been circling around my brother and his wife. What occurred to me through this is that my brother actually knows and understands me better than most anybody and that’s a precious thing…to feel known and loved. I need to say thanks to my brother and to his wife. So, Rob and Cher, thank you. Thank you for being there, for pushing me to live my dreams-not by saying I’m wrong but by not letting me forget them. Thank you for never even hinting that they may not practical or even in reach. Thank you for welcoming me into your home always (thanks, brother, for brow-beating me into creating a new habit – for pulling me into your life and making sure I stay there) I don’t believe I can actually put into words how much your love and persistence comfort me. Even when you’re not in the best space, it comforts me to be near you and you’ve never once denied me that and that is priceless (and not in the soppy way of those damn commercials.) I imagine my life and I can’t see it without you there…at least no version of it I care to live in any case.

I’ve been going over and over this and the conversation keeps circling back to the same set of words tonight. I’m upset and I don’t know why – I feel like I want to cry and I want out of my body, out of my head in the worst way right now. I want to have some peace, I want to feel the happiness I know is just on the other side, the satisfaction of taking the right steps. I’m sure this will be less urgent tomorrow but, right now…well…I’m not planning on disappearing or tail-spinning or anything so no one freak out – this has just been the most persistently recurring bit of conversation keeping me up this past week so I thought I should get it out. Maybe it’ll leave me alone for awhile. I don’t know but the anniversary of my father’s passing is coming up and this time of year has not been very good for me since he died and maybe that’s where all this is coming from. It doesn’t rally matter. It reminds me of something obvious but easily overlooked – we each of us have a finite amount of time left in our lives, it’s built in to the design and the not knowing how finite it is allows us to pretend it isn’t there and it’s the wrong way to live. I just want my father back because it’s wrong that he’s dead and now I’ll never have the chance to really know him or to feel that he knows me. It scares me to think how easy it was to lose the opportunity, how final it was when it came – 24 years was all we got and I have to believe we’d have made better use of the time if we’d known – wouldn’t we?