Thoughts at four a.m.

[In the darkness: three thousand half-baked but heartfelt anxieties about the future, my general competence, the rushing onward of time, etc.]

GO BACK TO SLEEP

[Fruitlessly reiterated frets]

THAT ISN'T HELPING

You should write more! Think better! Time's a-wasting! The baby is getting older ALL THE TIME and what are you doing about it? Death, the abyss.

What is wrong with you? Other people are fully capable of performing the simple task that is sleeping through the night. The baby can sleep through the night. She's sleeping perfectly right this minute. Why can't you? 

You know, every minute you waste being uselessly awake right now is another minute LOST FOREVER when you might have been sleeping uninterrupted. 

If you're going to go so far as to get out of bed and type things, why aren't you getting a start on the work you have to do tomorrow?

Shut up.

You'll be sorry.

NNNNG.

No! I CAN SLEEP. You aren't the boss of me, ...me. So there! (Wish me luck.)

Postscript: That worked surprisingly well. I went back to bed at last and slept in a peaceful, orderly fashion (I hate disorderly sleeping, don't you?) until the baby woke us, around seven.

And now here that it is daytime, I would like to note that there is nothing in particular to be anxious about at all. I mean, yes, there is always good old death to worry about, and I have always been the sort of person to lie awake contemplating my own oblivion, but otherwise I am actually unusually on top of things all around and even have clean clothes to wear. I wonder what chemical my body is dumping into my bloodstream at that ungodly hour to make my eyes fly open and my mind race off in search of something, anything to get worked up about. It seems like a design flaw.

Comments

[adriana]

"Death, the abyss." This articulates COMPLETELY where most of my late night thoughts travel.

[Yer Mum]

Relief can do it sometimes. When you have lost your most specific worry focii, but you know there must be something....

[Elsa]

"Death, the abyss."

Yup. That's when I get up and play 20 minutes of Pac Man: if my brain insists on being all goth 15-year-old me, then I will give it a taste of being 15. HOW DO YOU LIKE THAT, BRAIN?