The last blog I started writing was a bust - probably because I was trying to write it for an under cultivated audience. Or it could just be that I wasn't writing for me. This blog will be different. Everything in my life is at a turning point now. I continually feel that I am on the cusp of adult.
Or more accurately, I'm being pushed off the edge by savages with sharp pointed sticks. And there at the bottom of a black pit lies the future. Black because it's unknown, not because I expect to crash at the bottom.
I think that's what an unplanned pregnancy will do to you. Especially when you have to go through it while watching the person who helped create the life, the person you loved, fall in love with someone 12 years younger than them. Watch them fall in love with a child really - someone who isn't even old enough to buy alcohol.
So call this blog my bitter musings - my warm shoulder to write on. Maybe I'll even find my sense of humor again. My most days, it will be the story of my struggle to make it from one step to the next.
Beginning with today. Honestly, I don't know how I picked today to start writing. The sparkle of fire to do so has been naggin at me for weeks, but somehow I start today.
Why today? Because trying to type actual words when I struggle to keep my eyes open is a great game!
I am 25 weeks pregnant and I'm finally beginning to understand the real meaning of sleepless nights.
The sleep troubles have been steadily building over the past couple weeks.
It started one night when I awoke at about 4am needing to pee. In my half asleep consciousness, I thought I saw a darkly dressed figure standing by my window. I only saw it for a second, but it scared me nonetheless. More than likely it was delay from some dream I was having, but I was a bit... nervous. My natural inclination would be to cuddle up with my puppy - a 100 pound Australian Sheppard-Husky mix... but she had vacated the bed. I called her. I patted the bed. I snapped and said, "Up." She looked at me cock-eyed like I was nuts and went immediately back to sleep.
I'm so glad I got a big dog for protection.
But her nonchalance did help convince me there was no ghost.
That and the reassuring fact that my house was absolutely not built over a graveyard - non had anyone died in it.
I should have let it be at that. But the one thing my mom and I could always talk about without ever fighting, was our dreams. So I told her. And then we're all talking about it. So it stays on my mind.
And she's convinced I'm being haunted by some relative because the ghost was really tall.
A few nights later, I had a dream that my dog was dying of cancer. Because being pregnant means that all of your worries and fears materialize into CRAZY dreams. I woke up, even more worried about my puppy and called her crawl back in bed with me. This time: she did.
Then last week, I awoke to the distinct smell of marlboro cigarettes. Marlboro reds to be precise. I could have SWORN someone had blown smoke directly in my face. So I convinced myself the ghost-man was back... apparently blowing smoke at me. So for thirty minutes I sat bolt up in bed, thinking through alternate possibilities.
Maybe a group of teenagers was standing in our driveway lighting up... but would it really smell that strong?
Maybe the house was on fire... but why did it smells like cigarettes?
Maybe it was the ghost... but why would he do something so inconvenient and rude?!?
Finally I came to logic: I had just imagined it.
And I drifted back over to sleep, my brain arguing with itself: I could have sworn.... but I could have sworn... get me a stack of Bibles cuz I could have sworn.
So then two nights ago, I awoke at 3:15 - needing to go to the bathroom again. As I walked by little space heater, I felt the hot air hit my face. And I thought about the hot cigarette smoke. And I started thinking about the tall ghosty-man.... and being a mom all alone... and how I'll have to get up and keep my kid from being scared once he's here... and then I started thinking about me being scared at night... which got me thinking about how scared I was after Paranormal activity.
Needless to say when I got back from the bathroom, I switched on a lamp. I then lay for an hour with one eye open, hidden beneath a blanket, but watching the room from my little cave. I was just waiting for ghost man to show himself since he probably thought I for sure had to be asleep!
Which brings me to the insomnia of last night. After all of that, you probably wouldn't want to sleep either. Better to stay fully conscious throughout the night then to halfway wake-up at 3am believing that my room is haunting while I totter off to the bathroom looking more like a marionette than a person.
Thus, sleep eluded me until almost 2:30 last night. I was wired, my hips ached and I knew I would be useless at work today. Somehow though, I have yet to beginning nodding off at my desk! And that's why even though I've been so stressed lately... today is good. Because all these sleepless nights seemed harder without someone there to help calm me. Someone I could shake awake and ask to go see if there were crazy neighbor boys in the driveway. That seemed to make them so much worse. But today is different because I made it through it. I didn't fall asleep while driving to work. I haven't passed out at my desk. I'm making it through this day on less than 4 hours of sleep. Which means when my kid needs me to get by on that little sleep, I can do that too.
At least that's one less thing to have to worry about tonight.
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