An impending fail rather like I fear. More watery, really. from Shipment of Fail
[This entry is the first for #reverb10, an online initiative to reflect on the year and manifest what's next. Today's prompt is to encapsulate 2010 in one word, and tell what I hope will be the word that captures 2011.]
Impending.
Encapsulating 2010 in just one word is harder work than one would expect. It is not as simple (for me) as, say, choosing one event that occurred or remembering one action. It is more about what concept most applied over that time.
For almost all of 2010, I have had a sense, more prominent sometimes than others, that something terrible is going to happen.
I can imagine a whole host of things that might happen to make this come to pass, but the most likely would be something happening to my mother.
I have a contentious relationship with her, to the point where we have not spoken in over two years. She is very sick, in a medical and possibly a mental sense, but is unwilling to give up the vices that helped to make her and are mostly responsible for keeping her that way. She has alienated nearly everyone in her life with her actions, yet is unwilling to accept the blame where it belongs to her.
When the sense of impending dread struck me earlier this year, I was in the midst of a stretch where she called and left me rambling, highly charged voicemail messages. Sometimes sobbing, sometimes enraged, sometimes probably both, she said all manner of things to me, the spectrum from the sweetest motherly “you’ll always be my baby boy” to the spiteful, rueful “you are the reason I am like this.”
My initial reaction was not, as one would expect of most people, to feel bad for her, or to take what she said (good or bad) to heart. No, my reaction was cynical anger.
So when that sense of impending doom came over me, and I connected it logically to my mom, I was struck by another emotion, seemingly contradictory: relief. If something horrible did happen, then at least she would be able to rest.
Thus far, nothing has happened that would fulfill that sense of doom, either to her or to anyone else in my life. As such, the feeling has not gone away, merely ebbed and flowed with my moods. It has dominated much of my life in 2010, even though (as is my wont) I have not spoken about it much.
I am of two minds. On one hand, I hope that nothing does happen, that everyone stays safe. On the other, if something did occur and that sense was assuaged, I would be able to relax some, maybe sleep. I would like that.
For 2011, I hope to all that I can encapsulate it with the word “rest”. As previously mentioned, due at least in part to my primal certainty that something is going to go awry, I have developed a fairly impressive ability to stay awake until four or five in the morning regardless of how tired I am and how late I was up the night before, only to then, one random day, crash completely and sleep for 12 or 16 hours without the possibility of being roused.
It is, as they say, not the greatest thing in the world.
I want so much to be able to rest, to feel at ease. Instead, it’s getting worse over time; the current tendency to be up past five in the morning when I have to leave for work at eight evolved from lying awake in bed until two or three.
I’m not sure what my life will bring in 2011 just yet, although I am confident in change. I just hope that change is for the better, and allows me the relaxation that I selfishly believe I have earned.
The only thing in that regard is to let or make what will happen happen and accept the consequences.
I learned the trick of falling asleep to this song from an ex-girlfriend. Any time it came on, while I was listening intently, she’d fall asleep.
I asked her about it. She said something to the effect that I should just hear it. Like most things in my life, I’d been making it harder than it had to be.
I’ve had long, restful nights with this song as my soundtrack. I used to have my music playing constantly on random; my parents, and later my roommates, hated that. Sometimes, though, I just needed to hear the right thing, and often, at night, after I’d learned its secrets, this song was the right thing.
Contrast that to now, when I don’t listen to any music at all when I sleep. Which is more or less always. And lately, I don’t sleep. I wonder if these things are related?
I’ve never been much of a sleeper, but recently, it’s gotten out of hand. Four hours is a long night for me now; I’ll go a week or two or three on two to four hours of sleep per night until my body just can’t take it any more and I’ll sleep for ten or twelve or fourteen hours at a stretch.
I’m at a point now where I tell people “I don’t really do that any more” when they ask me if I’ve slept, and I’m not really exaggerating. I don’t think that’s healthy.
I am resistant to pills or other sedatives to help me sleep. I have a sneaking suspicion that if I were to use them with success, a habit would not be long in forming.
So that leaves me with something else, something I hadn’t thought of in years before it came time to think about this, the idea of music as a sedative. Noise to drown out that in my head. A slow cold song to wash over me so I can wrap myself up and escape.
I’m romanticizing sleep now. That might be a sign of something. I wish I knew what.
Maybe it’s time for me to put on “Svefn-g-englar”.
It’s been almost a week now since I unceremoniously lost my job. I’ve only fallen asleep before 4am once in that time, and even then I was awake by 3am.
Things were going quite well. I was, for probably the first time in my life, content with all aspects of my being. Was it perfect? Not a chance. Are there several to many things that could have been improved? Absolutely. But I was happy.
A friend counseled me with the advice, “It will get better. It always gets worse before it gets better.”
“I didn’t need it to get better. It was perfectly peachy the way it was.”
Over the winter after I first moved out of my parents’ house, the apartment in which I lived had minimal heat and even more minimal insulation. On the coldest nights, my body would warm my spot on the bed and I’d fall asleep. If I moved from that spot, the chill would awaken me immediately.
During the heat wave of the past few days, I slept with my fan pointing directly at my chest, doing everything it could to keep my core temperature cool. If I moved out of the fan’s path during the night, I was immediately awakened by the heat.
The moral of this story? Climate control is good for your sleeping habits.
Last night: I’m so bad at Halo that I can’t even win in my own dream… and I still have fun.
Also last night: Somebody set a cigarette on my phone, causing a melt-burn on the screen. I bitched at Tony for it. He told me that it was fucked up anyway and I shouldn’t drop it so much. “But Tony, it’s a burn,” I said. “From a cigarette,” we said in unison. Obviously, I gave him a dap.
Third (dreamless), Tony once told a couple of our co-workers to fight to the death and tie so they would put each other out of our misery. That was awesome.
I woke up facing the windows, enjoying what little time I have to use my entire home as sanctuary. Outside, the bright light night was subdued by the ominous cloudcover, the same that had let it out on me and my eight million neighbors just a few hours earlier.
I’m trying to get used to the time difference; it’s only 1:15am in Las Vegas.
Sometimes, like now, by tricky method of beating time changes by sleeping while traveling backfires. I have five hours to shower, sleep, eat, and leave the house.
I have a feeling tomorrow will be a very long day. I’ve not been well lately; I hope that some semblance of rest can change that.
No matter how I feel, I’m glad to be home. There are things here that I am only too happy to be able to return to.
I woke up a little late, but not too late that I was going to be late. The extra few minutes of sleep were very well received by my tired body.
The sky was overcast, but the weather was as perfect as it has ever been in my world. It was raining lightly, intermittently. The temperature was as lovely as I could have asked, just right for my sweater and jacket.
As it happened, there was no rush. As soon as I got in the subway station, the train rolled to a stop, and I got on. There was an ever-so-slight delay, but I was still five minutes early to meet my friend for our work-related day trip.
We went to the coffee shop where I used to work. Behind the counter stood my favorite-ever coworker, who also happens to be one of my closest friends. She genuinely lit up when she saw me.
It made me happy to see someone I love so soon in the day, and unexpectedly.
We made our way, the straggling holiday vacationers opening the way with their absence.
The workday was, for me, uneventful. I read a little, packed a few boxes. I was also given a pair of gifts: Andrei Tarkovsky’s Solaris and David Cronenberg’s The Fly.
The drive home was almost surreal. The roadway was not empty; there are too many people for that to be the case in any situation. Nevertheless, the cars were moving, moving with speed and grace, considerate, something I never believed I would see here.
I met another of my closest friends for dinner. We had Italian and ice cream (not gelato), and I was unconcerned about the cost; it just felt good to be with someone who cares about me.
I came home late, showered, and fell asleep with Solaris silently casting shadows across my eyes.
