Sleepless

Sometimes I can’t sleep.
It comes out of nowhere.
Wide awake, midnight loses its meaning.
Still awake.

I don’t have voices talking too loud,
Or things left over from the day.
No family drama, worries about kids
Just unlistened to feelings rearing their heads.

Snow is coming and bringing with it short days of dread, I still have weeds that have overtaken my yard.  A whole year of them taunting and now they’re dead,  but still taller than the fence and won’t fit in my trashcan.  I used to have grass and enjoyed sitting outside. This year I missed all the sunsets to avoid puffy eyes and endless sneezing. My space of joy choked for real by the worst weeds I’ve ever seen.

Work is a tornado no matter what I do, reschedule here or accomodate there with distant trips just to make up the time I already spent.  Spending still happens, must I really retire? Overly responsible I get a pit in my gut, save for vacation…well not for this month, its just bills and more bills and the house eats a lot.

Fear creeps its head,  I haven’t acknowledged the reeper in a month or two, he’s back with a vengeance to remind me he’s there,  one slip from me and he’ll be happily fed. What am I afraid of…oh what am I not!? I could write a novel as long as a roll of toilet paper both front and back with irrational fears paired up with what’s real.  I make this list alone in the dark,  that’s why that guy fear showed up tonight,  he’s kind that way, never leaves me out, he’s so quick to share his ideas for my list, it’s grows extra fast with his hat in the race.
Conversations unravel from my head to my lips,  thoughts I’ve been thinking but haven’t yet said.  Not all are bad or terrifying, just having a say while I’m attending.

It’s mostly adulting,  I carry around to much. At the end of the day sometimes I simply forfeit. Being a kid I had no idea,  how I long to forget and feel 7 again. Sometimes its just hard to do everything myself.  I want to drop my real life and just stay in bed.

I hate competition and right around the corner I’m biking a race. Why the hell did I sign up for an activity that causes deep internal panic!? That’s probably the catalyst for my wide open eyes past the middle of the night…I wonder if there’s enough time before then to suddenly move to Australia?
It’s not the lessons learned,  the joy at the end,  the process of “training” or signing up with a friend…it’s literally the experience of being slower than everyone and stuck in a crowd with expectations. I pull over on trails so I’m always in the back,  no one on my trail to mess up my focus, keeping my own pace so I enjoy my time in the trees… why am I racing?? How is this me?

I work with kids on the autism spectrum and sensory disorders.  When they reach overload with agendas, work load, sensory or conversation they meltdown into screams until someone calms them…I get the spiraling build up of internal stress, I think that’s why I like them,  we hear the same noise.

I keep it in check,  I don’t meltdown outloud,  but inside I’m on overload the screaming is silent. I tick to many boxes without feeling the shift then all of a sudden the scale recognizes its been tipped. I’ve always been that way with regulation and pace. I deal with it myself until it spills out. I’ve cried tears of frustration on so many trails, working it out,  but sometimes those feelings follow me home sneaking out after dark.  Too big to give names or point a finger, yelling at the one who tipped the scale doesn’t really matter given the huge mess of feelings splattered all over the floor. Surrounded by glitter my feeling line the floor, no matter my next move in marked clean up takes forever.

Frustration and lonliness splotched in green, stress and fear stained yellow the blue in my tears, failures bleed red smeared orange by my attempts and bury what hope I had in a coffin of purple.

Who knows how long I’ve been setting these feelings aside not really attending to the depth they long to provide. With my feeling exploded into rainbow soup,  a mess on the floor I can no longer ignore,  they steal the sleep I’ve been using to avoid their chatter. I don’t want to listen,  but they’ve insisted they matter.

Hello 1am will you call timeout? I’ve got to work tomorrow and my pillow is lonely. Will you help me sing lullabies to these needy voices so we can all rest and find a new pace in the morning. Things will be calmer and less of a bother after tomorrow grows later with tonight leading the way. The mess on the floor might return to the sky waiting for light after the next time it rains.