Did I mention I’m moody? I am. It’s true. I’m having a lot of sleep challenges since… well… I pretty nearly always have, at least as ‘always have’ as I can easily recollect.  Whole years have gone by without every getting an entire night’s sleep… now and then it’s nightmares, other times insomnia. Sleep and I have a difficult relationship. Lately it’s a terrible combination of restless, nightmare-filled sleep, and anxious sleepless nights interrupted by occasional longish naps that don’t restore my energy.  Annoying that mood management (both the relative ease of it, as well as the quality of the outcome) seems so closely tied to the quality and sufficiency of my sleep. I can’t really find a reason to be in a bad mood, but I can feel it lurking at the corners of my mouth, turning every effort at a smile into some grim suspicious visage that certainly isn’t bringing anyone any cheer around here. I feel… guarded. I hesitate to be open or vulnerable, or inadvertently be real enough, for just a moment, that the dike of my will power might give way to the tears crowding in line behind my eyes.  Fuck all these tears.  I angrily tell myself ‘I am so done with crying!’  Even though I know it is the angry bravado of fear, I lean on it like a cane for a moment, just to get past that feeling of teetering on a precipice.  There’s work to be done.

I do something nice for myself… I take a deep breath, ask a loved one for emotional support in a clear and simple way, uncluttered, unexplained – still trying to respect boundaries, and limits – feeling a bit like a tiny kitten seeking solace from a huge guard dog. Hoping for the best, trusting love, and finding that like so many things, the fear is far far scarier all by itself than any probable outcome.

What hurts me most on a day like this one, is that I can poke around in my experience and clearly recognize how loved I am, how much support I do have from my loved ones. I ache with shame and frustration that I feel so disconnected and wounded and alien.  I have a good life.  It’s rich with love, and Love, and beauty – we have a good home together, shared values and goals, and our necessities are covered… a good life. It’s only my own very subjective experience with myself that sucks so completely, right now.  It gets ugly in here sometimes.

Walking in to the office today, I watched the sullen moody clouds of the morning sky and mused for a time how many times in my life I’ve watch stormy clouds with a stormy heart, tears on the edge of falling like the rain I know is in the distance.  It’s a familiar feeling, they are familiar thoughts, and they have a song.  If I had a soundtrack to my life, this would definitely be on it.  Especially this bit (credit to Pete Townsend):

On the dry and dusty road
The nights we spend apart alone
I need to get back home to cool, cool rain

I can’t sleep, and I lay, and I think
The night is hot and black as ink
Oh God, I need a drink of cool, cool rain

I need a new playlist.  One that focuses me, moves me forward, and helps me ‘rebuild the lost city’ (and no I can’t really explain what I mean, they’re just words being used to attempt to describe a feeling I don’t have a word for).  What would be on it? That’s a list for another day.