SassyBlonde

Cannot sleep, cannot sleep. No yawning, just an acidy queasiness in the pit of my stomach.

There are times in life when sleep is an escape, and times when sleep is the haven of nightmares. Tonight, my mind fears the latter more than it longs for the former. This is the quandary I face in the week before a concert-- sleep more, play better? Sleep less, be more sane? I don't know.

There have been so many fruit-basket turnovers this past week. All of that insanity last weekend. Friendships dead on the vine for no good reason. New vistas opening up for my projects. And no escape, and no sleep, in sight.

My problem is that I have to have some small measure of peace to sleep well, and I have none right now. Every once in a while my body reaches a certain frequency where I know if head hits the pillow I just know I'll be doing calculus all night.

When I went back to school a couple of years ago (geez, was it that long?) I started noticing a really startling phenomenon-- when I went to sleep at night during a stressful period, I would simply live out a regular day in my dreams, usually doing some mundane task in my mind over and over and over. Most of the time, it was calculus problems. I would literally be trying to do my homework in my sleep and reach no conclusion even though my brain cycled through evolution after evolution of the dreaded problem. It got so I could recognize that state of mind before I ever went to sleep, and I think I sort of started avoiding it. I'd stay up later and later and later each night, until I'd finally fall asleep at some insane hour of the morning and wake up later feeling like I'd been hit by a Mack truck.

Something about the early morning dawn hours, maybe the light or the temperature or the quiet or just the exhaustion translates into a different kind of sleep for me-- more peaceful and unbroken than what occurs at normal hours. D jokes that I'm a vampire. I feel almost like a soul in purgatory, though.

Those hours between "bed time" and when I actually fall asleep are when all of my anxiety, all of my stress, manifests itself in jaw-cracking yawning fits of anxiety. I hold it off all day as I get my work done, but then it takes hold of me and fixates me on whatever my main focus is. I sit and surf and stare and can never quite get around to going to sleep, because I know on some subconscious level I'll dream of whatever is bothering me in one way or another.

Sleeping pills don't work-- they just trap me in the ether with the calculus demon. Working myself of exhaustion barely works, when I have enough energy to try it. Curling up with a cat is great, but it's a too-warm comfort these humid insane spring-summer days, and a waking one at that.

What do you guys do to fall asleep when it eludes you?

I am broken. Scooped out, hollow, spent, a dried-up husk. I have expended the energy allotted to my season and my soul is no longer fertile with the possibilities of energy, activity, and change. Its fuel has long since been spent, the flames sunk to embers-- one small wisp of smoke trails from the remains. I have poured my effort and time and thoughts into a chasm of work and seen it still yawning before me. I have reached the end of my ability and it is not enough.

I have a problem: I like to DO, and sometimes that sets me on the path to trouble. Not the doing part, per se, but the agreeing to do. Every so often I tempt fate and ask for more work than I can handle, and usually I've managed to power through until I have it done, usually nearly at the cost of my sanity, and the price is paid in weeks of lethargy and heavy, drunken sleep. This time, however, I think I have had my bluff called.

I don't have enough time, this time. I don't have enough energy. Somewhere in the past year I've gotten lost. I remember a self who was able to take joy unashamed and unadulterated. I remember a self who could get lost in her passions. I remember a self who could manage the burdens she had shouldered and then lay them down.

Somewhere along the line that self fell away, prey to ambition and work and demands. I've forgotten how to let those things go and put them down and they've become intertwined with my soul like a dark clinging vine. Burnout has come and gone, and there's really not much left behind. I feel like I'm sitting alone in a darkened room, quiet and fearful. This self knows that this too shall pass, but for the moment it shivers and quakes and cannot move, paralyzed by the thoughts it carries and the shades that hem it in. It sees the darkness and can feel it looking back, silent, airless, vast and empty and meaningless.

All it longs for is escape. Escape in body to comforting hands and hearts, escape in mind to a place where the fearful wings of doubt and stress and demands don't enfold my heart from my first waking moments into the next night's dreams. Silence. Peace.

Fear not, gentle reader. I do know that this state of mind, while strange, is passing so. I can see the pathway out of the valley and know its steps well and truly. I've been here before. Except that this time something seems to be staying behind here-- a younger self, a lost dream, a change of mind: a shift in the fabric of my reality. I leave this place a little lighter and a little more shadowed than when I came this time. I leave, nonetheless, to sunnier climes of the mind, but with the memory of the shadow left behind and the knowledge that it waits for me on the road ahead, ears cocked and black tail wagging.

I am an inveterate procrastinator at heart. Most projects I undertake get finished at crunch time or not at all, and I'm a creature of deadlines and to-do lists for a reason: if I don't have a deadline I'll never finish. Sometimes that's because I overbook myself or burn out, but usually it's just because I forget or it falls off my radar until I'm down to the wire.

Now this can become a real problem when it comes to my philosophy of gift giving, especially for events like weddings and baby showers: I hate giving nondescript stuff off registries, or at least to give only that kind of thing-- I've had way too good of an example set for me by Sister Sassy and my aunt in terms of thoughtful giving. This of course means that I have to plan ahead, and well, you can see where that train of thought leads.

Procrastination was definitely the case for my friend's baby shower today-- I had a great idea for a gift weeks ago and simply got too busy with painting, cleaning and concert PR and let it slip my mind until my commute last night to the theatre. Crap, I thought, and resigned myself to another night of watching the Olympics like a zombie while I worked.

I had hit on the idea a while ago to do a watercolor calligraphy setting of this poem for her newly decorated nursery, but just hadn't dug out my aquarelle pencils and paper, so that's what I did when I got home. Hour by painstaking hour I outlined, inked, and washed, and eventually was left with the piece that I wrapped up for her this morning before I left, never having seen my bed and having burned through about five episodes of Jeremiah and a lot of esoteric sports coverage.

I honestly have to say it was worth it, though-- after opening mounds of cutely wrapped bibs, blankets, clothes and equipment, she was eventually handed my brown-paper-wrapped packages (note to self: if your package doesn't have riotous scrawls of pink and blue or puppies on it, the Vera Bradley-toting shower coordinator will place it at the back or under the table like a red-headed stepchild no matter how big or small it is) and after pulling the paper open, her eyes filled with tears and she hugged me close. (It didn't hurt either that the other gift made her howl with laughter.) At least I hit this one out of the park, even if it was last minute. Woohoo!

When love comes along, real honest-to-God love, it's always a surprise.

I say this, sitting in my chair with a purring fuzzball of a spaz-cat curled on my arm and watching the cursor surreptitiously to make sure it doesn't make good its escape from the screen. Sitting and purring with his sense of appropriate grace and consort, knowing that this, now, is the place where he is needed most. I find myself scratching his ears and cooing, running tired fingers across the silken profile of his furry head, watching as his large green eyes slit into wells of condensed bliss and wondering that from that came this.

When we acquired the spaz cat, he was little more than an elegantly contrived wind-up toy, small enough to fit in a pocket or a palm and just as erratic and kinetic in nature. He whirred and whizzed and skittered and boinged, careening constantly and with utter abandon until his little body simply wound down and he flopped, careless and bohemian and easy on whatever surface he had landed upon-- floors, windowsills, toilet seats, laps, plants. He was utterly contained unto himself and completely self-absorbed-- unlike our serene, self possessed older cat who merely watched with zen-like peace and passivity, waiting for the perfect lap to present itself or the perfect wedging-space to appear between a leg and a sofa pillow. For the longest time he simply existed, like a pampered prodigy, as if his whims were what the world turned upon-- yowling and scheming and batting and sulking. And yet, among all of those things, there were small moments of connection which I never really recognized until he was gone for those four days a few weeks ago.

The house was quiet.

The older cat never made bones about it as such-- he just walked and searched, turning a cool liquid eye on me as if to say Somehow you have to fix this... this is not good, not balanced, not all right. And surprisingly, I agreed. For all of his self-absorbed mannerisms, there was a piece missing. And I started to realize that, even though he's feline, not human, there were certain kindnesses, certain relations with which he defined my existence.

When I wake in the early morning hours, surfacing from sleep into the heart-clenching, mind-warping throes of a panic attack, it is his furry paw which settles on my tear stained cheek and his wide liquid green eyes that search mine as he wedges into my shoulder, purring in my ear to say I am here... there are no words, but I *see* you, and I am here. It is he that comes and pats my arm in the wee hours of the morning to tell me I am being foolish, that sleep in necessary, and that someone notices my vigil through the long nighttime silence. It is he that distracts me from my ruminations, turning back flips and cartwheels and shadowboxing imaginary foes and real milk rings until I laugh and laugh, whereupon he feigns offense for only as long as I continue, performing a court jester's bow-stretch and curling over to show his belly in comic solidarity when I stop. It is he that eventually gives up, coming to rest wherever is the nearest touching place, so that I am not alone in my waking holding pattern. And it is he that keeps watch on the foot of my bed as I sleep fitfully into the daytime, facing away as if to circle the wagons and stay alert so that I may rest.

So you see, to me he is more than the kinetic furball everyone sees when they pass in and out of my door. He is constant, he is comic, he is companion.

From time to time I get a remark from someone I know that expresses incredulity that "people can feel that way about an animal." Lest you think that I'm evolving into a batty cat lady, I should clarify: I have only two, and they are quite sufficient. And that's really the point, isn't it? They are sufficient. They provide, as a good friend confided to me once, something missing in a newly forged home-- slapstick and attendance, mostly without judgment or comment.

And so it is that I write here of love. For all too long a time I didn't realize it, but I do love him as much as I do his older avatar and near-opposite, albeit in a different way. Ours is a relationship of active silences, passing affections, and dismissive respect: always overtly distracting, a game of smoke and mirrors, but always constant.


*And lest you should worry, nothing has happened to him, tests are still all mainly normal following the Lily Debacle, just doing a couple more this week to check up on things.

As I type this entry, the 44th president takes his oath mere miles from my cozy house on a plaza filled to the brim with spectators famous and everyman, all shining with hope from every face. This is a day a long time coming, not just because this man is African American, but because he is the embodiment of hope on so many levels that I have longed for, for longer than I can remember.

I remember four years ago being resigned to the direction of this immediately past presidential term. The man coming into office was the picture of my resignation, because my choices had failed me, the options available had fallen so far short of what I wanted, what we needed. He was a placeholder, a worst-case scenario bid. I remember saying to David that I was so, so very tired of being ashamed of our leaders, indifferent about the choices I had to fill those spots, and of feeling apologetic every time I had to out myself as an American when I left this country. I remember pounding my fist on our kitchen table and ask why, why we could not find one man or woman who was willing to stand up and speak truth to power, to ignore politics and do what was right for the people of this country as a whole, and who I could believe in, and hope for, and be proud of as the leader of our country.

As I listen to Barack Obama's first words as our newest president, I finally feel the blossom of hope, of relief, and of pride. Even now, he speaks out and says what needs saying. He indicts the mistakes of the past administration, he elucidates the tasks we have before us, he finds the mot juste and places it with care, creating the ironclad and brilliant turn of phrase that we will remember for years to come. I realize that he won't be able to change things overnight, and I know he probably won't be able to fix everything, or maybe most things, but at least I know that he has the characteristics to do it if anyone can.

For the first time in years of living politics as local news, I feel peaceful, and that's saying something.

So here's the thing:

I've missed you guys.

I've had some pretty heavy things going on in my life this year, things which basically have changed the face of my entire existence in one way or another. And I haven't really felt comfortable talking about that here, in public, for anyone and everyone to read. More importantly, there are very good reasons why I can't and shouldn't.

And frankly, it's killing me.

Because if you're still reading this, then I've probably known you, or had you as a reader, for long enough that you're probably wondering what the hell happened to me.

Because if you're still reading this, you're probably one of the people whose opinions and love I value enough that I'm going to need your help in the next year.

Because frankly, I need an outlet more in-depth than Twitter and less personal than Facebook.

So here's the other thing:

On March 1st, this blog is getting a makeover. I'll be moving it to a new server, shaking up the layout a little, and converting it to a new CMS, though the site address won't change. The ranting and raving and silliness will stay the same, only there will be some things that I don't want to share with everybody, some things that I may need to share and say, but only within certain circles. I'm tired of keeping it all pent up and I've done that for long enough.

If you're still reading this blog, and you're been a loyal reader or friend or even a long-time lurker, email me at (sassy{at}sassyblonde{dot}net) with the title of this post in the subject line or comment on this post and request an access key. I'd love to have you in the circle.

Til then, I'll be cleaning house and doing some renovation, and I'll see you on March 1st.

UPDATE: So, snow and circumstances being what they've been around here, I'm going to have to ask you guys to wait around a little longer, which actually ends up being appropriate for a lot of reasons. I've gotten all your emails and comments, and if you can hang tight for a few more weeks, I'll have the next phase ready on April 1st.