It's no secret that my anxieties keep me awake at night, often for hours at a time. Every night for the past few weeks, it's taken longer and longer for me to drift off, as I panic about needing to wake up so early (what if my alarm doesn't go off?), needing to interact with my bosses (especially now that I'm finishing my last two weeks), needing to say good-bye to my sweet, darling boy, and wondering, as all twenty-somethings seem to do: what am I doing with my life?!
No, these are not productive or healthy ways to spend one's minutes and hours before sleep, but they're what occupy my mind unless I make a huge effort to replace these thoughts with others. Last night, as Alix and I laid in bed and I started working myself into another round of useless panic, I stopped myself and quietly asked her, "Can we think about something happy so I can fall asleep?"
"Of course," she said, pausing to think for a minute. "Let's think about the day when your belly will be so big, it'll be impossible for me to hug you because our unborn child is taking up three quarters of our (not very big) bed." A slow grin spread across my face and stayed there as we whispered to each other for at least another hour about what it will be like to embark on such a remarkable, terrifying journey. I've said it before, and I'll say it again, there's something very sobering about the fact that pregnancy and parenting will never just "happen" for us. No matter when it happens, it will be a very deliberate, very expensive, and very labor-intensive (no pun intended) task. But last night, as we talked of the cradle my father will build for us, the blonde curls that will grace our first child's head, and the knowledge that this person exists because we (plus some generous anonymous sperm donor) created, all I could think about was how happy the idea made me. No matter what I'm currently doing with my life or what I wind up doing with my life, or what catastrophes come our way, knowing that I've found the person that I want to create and nurture new lives with is a blessing I can't even fully comprehend. How on earth did I get so lucky?
And then, yes, I fell asleep.
4 comments:
Oh honey, I love this post SO BIG. And so much love to you and Alix too.
(P.S. Alix -- great answer!)
so happy you have someone to turn to during those times/moments!! while I love being single, that's definitely one thing I miss a lot about having someone there.
I hear ya on the anxiety thing too..only problem is I'm not 100% sure what's causing mine (probably anlittle bi of everything). thanks to melatonin, I don't have trouble falling
asleep...but lately come 2 or 3am & I'm up for an hour tossing & turning until I slowly drift back into some
strange kind of sleep...
I am so, so incredibly lucky (and lucky to know that I'm lucky).
Nanny, our future spawn are in your capable hands. Always.
Dori, I hope your sleep improves. Melatonin worked for me for awhile, but it's true, waking up in the wee hours is a whole other beast of insomnia than the inability to fall asleep. Funny what kind of thoughts creep up that early in the morning, huh?
Babies! I'm glad you are finding something happy to fall asleep to. As you know, I also want to be pregnant and so on, but the idea is completely abstract for me at this point, where as since you have the person, you are much closer. And isn't it absurd that people get so upset about gay parents, who go to so much trouble to be parents, instead of worrying about all the difficulties created by children that just "happened" to some other people? Isn't that more concerning?
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