Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Insomnia(c)

It's far too late for me to be up, (the flipside of my too early wake ups), and light is hurting my eyes.
All of my nail-polish collection is cluttering up the coffee table, as I managed to paint my toes over when I got home from work tonight. The laundry (all washed, all of it) pile continues to grow. I rummaged through it this morning looking for a tank to wear under a nice mocha-silver new shirt to work that I discovered was a little low-cut when I put it on.  Second round of rummaging happened tonight, looking for a pair of (yes, freshly-washed) pajama shorts. Found them. Put them on.
I should be tired. I've been taking some sort of daily pill, I'm sad to admit, since The Headache hit two weeks ago.
I'm positive it's interfering with my sleep. I've continued to drink powdered magnesium dissolved in warm water, either at night or in the mornings, as a friend of mine wisely recommended.  I like it. I like adding to my vitamin and mineral aresenal, my mini-battle against my ever-shrinking cerebral cortex, the elasticity of my memory losing some of its precious snap these last few trouble-some years.
I re-read an entry from the second half of late 2009, one about trying to control my anxiety, and it was like reading something from another lifetime. Like something someone else wrote. I suppose it's good. I've had urges, lately, to prune the blog, to delete and dis-able some of the more painful entries to me, but I don't. For good or bad, they're here. They're what I had to say at the time.

I should be alot happier tonight. It was a 'good' day at work, an important project was secured, on the heels of another one being secured a very short time ago. I worked hard on both proposals. But once again, I watched, outside myself, the meeting that ensued after, (remembering my friend L's sure lines: 'confusing their lies with your truth' ) and another fitting phrase I read in the novel I was flipping through tonight, one I've read several times before, 'aggressively calm'.  A good description of much that unfolds in my daily life at work. Except I can't be both. I can remain calm through the whirlwinds, but that calm also damages my passion for work, I can't be both of those either. My calm comes across as lobotomized, I'm sure of it, and it too attacks my memory.  Routine tasks pile up. Fear of criticism, both direct and indirect, seems to paralyze me.
Then I get up, wash my hair, put a face on, and gamely do it all over again. Sometimes it feels marginally better.  Other times I have a distaste that I'm certain is spilling over into my physical self.  What do headaches mean anyway?
For tomorrow, this might be one of the posts I look back on and regret. But I can't censor it. All writing is practice, and this practice does require my truths. As one-sided as they might be at times.
See, I'm working on editing. On being more precise with truths--illustrating them, pinpointing and examining them. Finding out which ones I can use to fuel my ever-evolving voice.

City life has really been getting to me lately. It's summer, I want to be a social-loner, but there are people everywhere, on the streets, driving, walking, pedalling. Sirens are screaming. Birds are chirping. Light is revealing itself earlier and earlier in the mornings. The year anniversary looms. One of my dad's old friends emailed me on Monday night, randomly, to ask how my dad was doing. I had emailed him my blogged-obit, but he had not read it. I tried, clumsily, to explain, in an email reply, what had happened. The same thing occurred with my dad's accountant at tax-time, whom I had called to confirm I could once again mail him all the tax info for him to compile returns for my mom, dad, and me (you have to do a tax return for a deceased person. Go figure). It was as I dialled the accountant's number, a lovely man whom my father knew for many years, that I realized I had never contacted him to tell him of my dad's death. I apologized profusely, (he was very kind about it all) and mailed him a prayer card from my dad's service with the taxes.
It occurred to me then--really, anyone I told got their info in an email. I didn't really call anyone. The initial scar of being interrogated, rudely, over the phone, by an uncle of mine, the day my dad died, didn't go away. My cousin and her mother, and their self-centered attitude to it all, further soured me.
At the time, and even now, I just don't want to talk about it. Who really understands? That it wasn't just one event, but a series, tests of sorts, none of which I feel I really excelled at. Instead I just 'got it done'. No joy in those kinds of tasks. But doesn't getting it done have its own small pride? Perhaps this is me mingling work back into the equation. It's done, we've achieved something. Can we have a couple of goddamn hours to just be?

It's all exhausting. I'm going to bed.

Thanks for reading, if you are.

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