Sleepless

It is well-enough known that new motherhood is not conducive to well-restedness: babies generally don't let you sleep as much as you would like. How frustrating, then, that my Miss Baby now sleeps through the night, and I do not! I wouldn't say that I am an insomniac, but the nights that find me tossing and turning fruitlessly in the dark for hours are becoming more frequent and more regular.

So here I am writing to you at 4 in the morning--I might as well do something, right?

When I was younger--in my teens and twenties--I had a terror of this long dark midnight of the soul. One of the reasons I then was such a nightowl was that staying up on purpose forestalled lying in the dark and worrying. And I was always a worrier. I worried about the usual stuff, about being single forever, or about the failing of whatever relationship I happened to be in. About school and grades and homework assignments neglected and coming due. About what Life Held for Me in the Future. Tired but ever less sleepy, I would drift into more amorphous worries: always prey to 'imposter syndrome,' I would inevitably call the worth and purpose of my very existence into question. Good times! One of the main perks of 10 years of student life turned out to be that I could sleep in until noon after one of these episodes, put some serious distance between myself and the worry.

As I've aged and, I hope, matured, I worry about different things and about the same things. I don't think, for example, that I slept at all the night that Pynchon and I put in the successful offer on our house. The magnitude of the commitment, the legal irrevocability of it, both to the bank and to each other, awed me. A marital cliché, I also of course often lie awake in bed calculating budgets and bills and to-do lists major items from which escape my notice until 3am. The responsibilities of adulthood defeat me in the dark. The idea of managing food, shelter, nurturance--keeping body and soul together--for myself and my family seem in the middle of the night responsibilities to which I am unequal. I am pervaded by a nagging sense of dread. Nothing is right in the middle of the night.

The miserable loop of my nighttime thought process wraps me ever tighter across the chest as I roll and toss--I'll never get tenure because someone else scooped me on my book! How can we pay for daycare and property taxes on a reduced income in the same month! How can I get everything packed for our trip to Cuba! Where are the passports! Why on earth are we going to Cuba when we're so crunched for money! Now we owe a walloping tax bill for reasons inscrutable! Will Miss Baby be happy with my sister and mother for a week! How can I leave her! How come every time we fix something in our house something else falls apart! I'm hungry! I haven't had my hair cut for six months! When did I become such a frump! Am I old, and if so how can I still be so unformed, so immature! Immature and frumpy, Jesus what a stupid reason to like awake worrying! How will I ever stay awake for my full-day teaching workshop tomorrow! Why am I even going to a four day teaching workshop when I need to write a book! I'll never get tenure ... and the loop comes around again. For hours.

What always amazes me, though, is that by morning it all seems (pardon me) like a bad dream, nothing the light of day can't chase away. Even on drastically reduced sleep everything seems brighter. Doable. My dread thoughts of the hours prior reveal themselves to be mere chimeras of false logic, fatigue, and self-pity, easily vanquished by simple daytime doingness. I'm always tired after one of these nights, obviously, but I always manage to shake my head at my own silly fears--"I can't believe that kept me up all night," I chide myself. I write a cheque, or make a list, or start a new research project. I drink a lot of coffee and resolve to try to be calmer.*

I see the pattern, but I still can't shake night's clammy grip, can't loose myself from the claustrophobic worry with which it envelops me. But it is one thing to understand the futility of a course of action, and quite another thing to change course. Sleepless, I usually don't even manage to get of bed, to untangle worried me from the mess untidy sheets and blankets, uncomfortable me even more uncomfortable from a desire to not wake poor peaceful Pynchon. How pitiful to not even take the minimal step of walking away from my own terrible thoughts, too hopeless even to soothe myself with TV or some blogs. I usually just lie awake, awe-struck, miserable, feeling culpable and afraid until suddenly it's morning and I must have been sleeping again.

I have read that when worries keep me awake I might write them down, to translate amorphous dread into a plan for aciton. So here I am, in my dark midnight house, feeling the chill on my bare arms and explaining myself through my fingers. Trying to chase the ghosts away in the light of a laptop screen, to lull myself to drowsiness with the soft clicking of keys. The night, though, is a place, a topsy-turvy world where competent, cheery, daytime me can't operate. No amount of list-making can soften its fearsome topography. Night, sleepless worried night, is a space that must simply be traversed, the scary void between know territories, the dark hallway shadows between the nightlights that I rushed through, heart-pounding, in midnight trips to the bathroom as a child.

How silly it all is! Maybe, though, the defeats of the nighttime offer a necessary darkness to my otherwise charmed life. Maybe the night keeps me humble, reminds me that things are not always easy, that a good attitude is sometimes insufficient. That the human soul is not endlessly capable of easing its own cares. That it is vulnerable. That I am vulnerable.

Tomorrow--today!--the mists will clear. I'll write you something about about the wonderful wonderful bloggy fun over here this weekend, of new old friends, of surprising connections, and of the intensity of interaction that comes when bloggers who already 'know' each other 'meet'.
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* I didn't say my judgment improved. Only my outlook. Morning can only do so much.