Insomnia
So, here it is, 3:30 A.M. and I want to start crying. I am exhausted...everything in my body is heavy, fatigued, sleepy...but my mind won't let me sleep. I am fretting over things that I don't need to fret about and remembering things I don't need to remember and feeling guilty for things I don't need to feel guilt for. I am trying to solve problems that have no solution and fretting about the fact that I can't sleep and I have been up since 1:30 and I have to get up in an hour and a half and yadda yadda yadda. It is so frustrating. I don't do this a lot, but when I do, it makes me crazy. Far too late to take a sleeping pill now, and I am wishing I had taken a quarter dose of one when I first felt this coming on not long after midnight.
I have not been writing much here. The world is so full of angst and fear, and it rubs off on me and makes me anxious. Joe seems to be good at picking up on this and frequently brings how okay we are up in casual conversation. Even the kids, who enjoy watching the news, have picked up on the fearfulness of the country about the economy and the elections and they sought clarification and reassurance from me on Friday night, wanting to know what "recession" means and if our government can go bankrupt and if our house is in danger of foreclosure (it is most definitely not) and what all that would mean to our lives. I spent time talking to them about recessions and depressions and the fact that money can get tight but we will still have plenty to eat and a warm place to call home, we just might not get to go to the movies as much for a while. That seemed to help them feel better, but I am fretting now about them fretting, wondering if I ought to be restricting their access to news that they are not old enough to fully comprehend yet, if I am being irresponsible for letting them watch it. Alex had a grief attack about Joseph on Friday night, kind of out of nowhere..he definitely had trouble differentiating between the term "depression" in the economy and "depression" in a person. Just talking about the word in the economic sense brought back for him the time in his life that he felt most depressed and he was tearful and broken and not wanting to talk about why. He came home and lay down on his bed and did not move. It was just heavy on his shoulders. I bought him a pumpkin and just felt inadequate to help him. I am so so so sorry your brother died Baby. Here. Have a pumpkin. Yeah. Impotence at its finest.
Joe took me to see Michael Buble over the weekend as my birthday gift. It turns into a mini-vacation. We spent the night in Fort Worth at the Hilton, just one block up from the convention center. He'd gotten us a suite on the 9th floor, a corner room that overlooked the convention center itself. It was SO nice, probably the nicest hotel room I have personally ever stayed in. We got there early and so walked the downtown streets, found a sushi place and had a little snack, wandered through a beer festival going on, went to a Cajun place and drank beer and sampled alligator and gumbo while sitting on the patio watching the crowds go by, people watching. I had fun pointing out the most attractive ladies for him, which seemed to amuse him. One saw me smiling, us laughing and stopped to comment on how nice it was to see a happy couple having a good time and in love. She is right. It is so nice. There were brides everywhere, having their portrait taken in the evening light before their ceremony, gaggles of bridesmaids looking on, just married couples waving giddily from horse drawn carriages, and our hotel was swarming with wedding parties and the relatives in from out of town to attend. Romance was in the air and being the Hallmark girl I am, I breathed it in and enjoyed every minute of it.
Michael Buble was fantastic..he is such an entertainer, so genuine, charming, funny, risque. It was amazing that he made you feel like you KNOW him...his mannerisms reminded me of my brother Ryan a great deal, who is also very charming. Michael's voice is like butter..so smooth and slick. At the end he gave a very heartfelt speech of thanks that we would spend our money to come see him, that other entertainer friends of his were having to cancel tours and he was cognizant that it was a choice we were making when we decided he was someone we wanted to see...I was just blown away by him. He seemed so genuinely touched....he then silenced his band, silenced the crowd...and this was amazing...he sang "Song For You" without accompanyment AND without a microphone. His projection was THAT good, in a convention center where the acoustics SUCK. We could hear him perfectly and the crowd was positively rapt, and the song itself after the speech he gave was perfect. It is the first concert I have ever gone to that I got misty-eyed when it was over. I could have watched him all night long. We spent the night in our lovely hotel suite, slept in until past 9 AM (unusual for both of us), drove back to Allen and stopped for lunch before coming home to plant pansies in the flower beds. All in all probably the best weekend I have ever had. I am so sad to see it end.
School is not going as well as I would like and I am questioning myself and doubting my decision to be a nurse. I just don't seem to have the same brain capacity this fall for whatever reason. I failed my first exam, but aced the extra credit quiz. I got the second lowest grade in the class on the exam, second highest on the quiz. And the questions on the quiz were also on the exam. Got them right on the quiz. Got them wrong on the exam. All I can think is that it was just nerves and emotional fallout from Grandma's death. I am trying to decide whether to drop the class, take the rest of the semester to deal with other things and try again next year. I definitely cannot afford to have anything less than a B on my transcript, and I can only make the requisite A now if I am pretty much flawles for the rest of the term. Given how I dread attending class on school days and that my stress level is through the roof (the main reason I am not sleeping tonight is fretting over school), maybe I should. I don't know.
My cousin is getting married in San Diego in two weeks and I am attending with my Mom. That will be fun. Halloween is not far off, then Thanksgiving and Christmas. Usually this time of year I start to get anticipatory and excited for those upcoming holidays. It is still painful, the jolt that hits me, that as I see the decorations coming out in the stores and start thinking about shopping, the pang of raw pain that hits me. I don't know if Christmas will ever be what it was before. Joseph was dying through the Christmas holiday and that year was pure, spiritual and raw as we muddled through without him and clung to our family. I miss him so desperately and can get very bogged down wishing for some sense of closure and peace about his passing. I have it from time to time, but not when I think about the holidays without him. I wonder constantly how tall he would be and how he'd be doing in school. I miss the soft touch of his bald head and the purity of his laughter. I wonder what he would be wanting this year. I just miss him. I will enjoy the festivities...I owe that to Joe, to my other boys and even to myself. But Christmas will always now be a bittersweet thing. Perhaps that is how it should have been all along. We celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World, even knowing now what his ultimate fate was to be. I wish I were better at prayer. I used to be, almost like a meditation. I just feel so hollow now when I talk to God. I feel as if I lost my spiritual voice. I picture his presence, reach for it and feel a void born of needing too much, of having SO MUCH I need to say that there is no way to possibly say any of it at all. I send my prayers to Him in an emotional cloud without conscious speech, peppered in short bursts of helplessness and tinged with misunderstanding and yearning rage. I float the Why to Him, the Ow Ow Ow to Him, the Oh My God I Am Lost to him....tidalwaves without words, rhythm or rhyme. I envision them approaching His awareness and I cannot watch it reach Him. They say He can take it...but I personally cannot imagine what He would say as it washes over Him nor can I fathom that whatever His message would be....that it would be enough.
So I lay awake and fret. And fret. And fret. It is 4...I have to be up in an hour. I hate this so much.
I have not been writing much here. The world is so full of angst and fear, and it rubs off on me and makes me anxious. Joe seems to be good at picking up on this and frequently brings how okay we are up in casual conversation. Even the kids, who enjoy watching the news, have picked up on the fearfulness of the country about the economy and the elections and they sought clarification and reassurance from me on Friday night, wanting to know what "recession" means and if our government can go bankrupt and if our house is in danger of foreclosure (it is most definitely not) and what all that would mean to our lives. I spent time talking to them about recessions and depressions and the fact that money can get tight but we will still have plenty to eat and a warm place to call home, we just might not get to go to the movies as much for a while. That seemed to help them feel better, but I am fretting now about them fretting, wondering if I ought to be restricting their access to news that they are not old enough to fully comprehend yet, if I am being irresponsible for letting them watch it. Alex had a grief attack about Joseph on Friday night, kind of out of nowhere..he definitely had trouble differentiating between the term "depression" in the economy and "depression" in a person. Just talking about the word in the economic sense brought back for him the time in his life that he felt most depressed and he was tearful and broken and not wanting to talk about why. He came home and lay down on his bed and did not move. It was just heavy on his shoulders. I bought him a pumpkin and just felt inadequate to help him. I am so so so sorry your brother died Baby. Here. Have a pumpkin. Yeah. Impotence at its finest.
Joe took me to see Michael Buble over the weekend as my birthday gift. It turns into a mini-vacation. We spent the night in Fort Worth at the Hilton, just one block up from the convention center. He'd gotten us a suite on the 9th floor, a corner room that overlooked the convention center itself. It was SO nice, probably the nicest hotel room I have personally ever stayed in. We got there early and so walked the downtown streets, found a sushi place and had a little snack, wandered through a beer festival going on, went to a Cajun place and drank beer and sampled alligator and gumbo while sitting on the patio watching the crowds go by, people watching. I had fun pointing out the most attractive ladies for him, which seemed to amuse him. One saw me smiling, us laughing and stopped to comment on how nice it was to see a happy couple having a good time and in love. She is right. It is so nice. There were brides everywhere, having their portrait taken in the evening light before their ceremony, gaggles of bridesmaids looking on, just married couples waving giddily from horse drawn carriages, and our hotel was swarming with wedding parties and the relatives in from out of town to attend. Romance was in the air and being the Hallmark girl I am, I breathed it in and enjoyed every minute of it.
Michael Buble was fantastic..he is such an entertainer, so genuine, charming, funny, risque. It was amazing that he made you feel like you KNOW him...his mannerisms reminded me of my brother Ryan a great deal, who is also very charming. Michael's voice is like butter..so smooth and slick. At the end he gave a very heartfelt speech of thanks that we would spend our money to come see him, that other entertainer friends of his were having to cancel tours and he was cognizant that it was a choice we were making when we decided he was someone we wanted to see...I was just blown away by him. He seemed so genuinely touched....he then silenced his band, silenced the crowd...and this was amazing...he sang "Song For You" without accompanyment AND without a microphone. His projection was THAT good, in a convention center where the acoustics SUCK. We could hear him perfectly and the crowd was positively rapt, and the song itself after the speech he gave was perfect. It is the first concert I have ever gone to that I got misty-eyed when it was over. I could have watched him all night long. We spent the night in our lovely hotel suite, slept in until past 9 AM (unusual for both of us), drove back to Allen and stopped for lunch before coming home to plant pansies in the flower beds. All in all probably the best weekend I have ever had. I am so sad to see it end.
School is not going as well as I would like and I am questioning myself and doubting my decision to be a nurse. I just don't seem to have the same brain capacity this fall for whatever reason. I failed my first exam, but aced the extra credit quiz. I got the second lowest grade in the class on the exam, second highest on the quiz. And the questions on the quiz were also on the exam. Got them right on the quiz. Got them wrong on the exam. All I can think is that it was just nerves and emotional fallout from Grandma's death. I am trying to decide whether to drop the class, take the rest of the semester to deal with other things and try again next year. I definitely cannot afford to have anything less than a B on my transcript, and I can only make the requisite A now if I am pretty much flawles for the rest of the term. Given how I dread attending class on school days and that my stress level is through the roof (the main reason I am not sleeping tonight is fretting over school), maybe I should. I don't know.
My cousin is getting married in San Diego in two weeks and I am attending with my Mom. That will be fun. Halloween is not far off, then Thanksgiving and Christmas. Usually this time of year I start to get anticipatory and excited for those upcoming holidays. It is still painful, the jolt that hits me, that as I see the decorations coming out in the stores and start thinking about shopping, the pang of raw pain that hits me. I don't know if Christmas will ever be what it was before. Joseph was dying through the Christmas holiday and that year was pure, spiritual and raw as we muddled through without him and clung to our family. I miss him so desperately and can get very bogged down wishing for some sense of closure and peace about his passing. I have it from time to time, but not when I think about the holidays without him. I wonder constantly how tall he would be and how he'd be doing in school. I miss the soft touch of his bald head and the purity of his laughter. I wonder what he would be wanting this year. I just miss him. I will enjoy the festivities...I owe that to Joe, to my other boys and even to myself. But Christmas will always now be a bittersweet thing. Perhaps that is how it should have been all along. We celebrate the birth of the Savior of the World, even knowing now what his ultimate fate was to be. I wish I were better at prayer. I used to be, almost like a meditation. I just feel so hollow now when I talk to God. I feel as if I lost my spiritual voice. I picture his presence, reach for it and feel a void born of needing too much, of having SO MUCH I need to say that there is no way to possibly say any of it at all. I send my prayers to Him in an emotional cloud without conscious speech, peppered in short bursts of helplessness and tinged with misunderstanding and yearning rage. I float the Why to Him, the Ow Ow Ow to Him, the Oh My God I Am Lost to him....tidalwaves without words, rhythm or rhyme. I envision them approaching His awareness and I cannot watch it reach Him. They say He can take it...but I personally cannot imagine what He would say as it washes over Him nor can I fathom that whatever His message would be....that it would be enough.
So I lay awake and fret. And fret. And fret. It is 4...I have to be up in an hour. I hate this so much.
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