It is 5.30 in the morning.
Who gets up at 5.30 in the morning?
I do.
Now.
Any one of my college roommates would snort with laughter if they knew this. My husband can vouch for it, as can my kids: I am not a morning person. For the majority of my life, I have been slow to wake, grumpy for at least the first hour I am awake, and before coffee entered my life (O Happy Day!) I don't know how my family tolerated me.
but this is precisely why I am up at this hour.
I've asked myself often in recent weeks - how is it that you've convinced yourself to crawl out from under the duvet at dawn? The answer, when it came, sweet & simple. This is the hour I am most Me. The hour when I am Kirsten - thinker of thoughts large and small, teller of jokes, reader, writer, runner - and yes, Mom and Wife.
It is silent. I have the time to start my engines - to sit quietly, to think, to dream. Most days I go for a run, and come back to a still-sleeping house. This gives me the chance to stretch, to wash my face, to pour a cup of coffee before I ever have to have a conversation with anyone.
Carving out this hour at the beginning of the day - these minutes where I am not asked for anything except for honesty with myself - has changed everything. I start the day having reached cruising speed, not lurching from the starting line awakened by the screams of a toddler wanting MOMMMEEE or a 5 year old putting his index finger in my ear. I start the day having checked in with myself, having made sure I know I'm still in there somewhere, and then can spend the rest of the day being all the other Kirstens that people need me to be.
What about you? Do you have a point in the day where you feel most like You, instead of Mommy/Sweetheart/MrsNilsen? (Well, I hope you don't feel like Mrs Nilsen, because that would be, you know, weird.)
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Sleep. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Tonight I'm Gonna Get Some...
Tonight I'm going to get some. I just know it.
When you're a kid, and you listen carefully when they least expect it, you hear adults murmuring about not getting enough. How deprived they are. Of course you don't understand - you don't really get what they keep talking about.
When you're a teenager, you get plenty of it, there's no such thing as enough. Any time of day, any time of night - works for you. And then of course your mom busts into your bedroom and ruins everything.
As an adult, things ease off. You are getting a civilized amount - if required, you can go without for a day or two, but never more than that. You're able to get as much as you feel you need.
Then come the desperate years when all of the sudden, you're getting NONE. A snatched bit here & there, but the void - the lack - becomes your total obsession. You find yourself thinking about it all day, all night. Sometimes you think you honestly might do it right there on the street - it's that bad.
They're intense, those years. But it eases off, the obsession, and before you know it, you're getting enough some weeks, not enough in others. You understand you won't die if you don't get it, but you also understand now there is nothing else under the sun that makes you lust in the same way.
...
...
...
I'm talking about sleep. You got that, right? I'm talking about sleep. Get your minds out of the gutter.
*****
This post is linked as part of Momalom's Five for Ten series - the fourth prompt was, obviously, LUST.
When you're a kid, and you listen carefully when they least expect it, you hear adults murmuring about not getting enough. How deprived they are. Of course you don't understand - you don't really get what they keep talking about.
When you're a teenager, you get plenty of it, there's no such thing as enough. Any time of day, any time of night - works for you. And then of course your mom busts into your bedroom and ruins everything.
As an adult, things ease off. You are getting a civilized amount - if required, you can go without for a day or two, but never more than that. You're able to get as much as you feel you need.
Then come the desperate years when all of the sudden, you're getting NONE. A snatched bit here & there, but the void - the lack - becomes your total obsession. You find yourself thinking about it all day, all night. Sometimes you think you honestly might do it right there on the street - it's that bad.
They're intense, those years. But it eases off, the obsession, and before you know it, you're getting enough some weeks, not enough in others. You understand you won't die if you don't get it, but you also understand now there is nothing else under the sun that makes you lust in the same way.
...
...
...
I'm talking about sleep. You got that, right? I'm talking about sleep. Get your minds out of the gutter.
*****
This post is linked as part of Momalom's Five for Ten series - the fourth prompt was, obviously, LUST.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
It's 3.12 a.m.
When you crawl into bed at 11.45, you know it will be a rough start in the morning. But you optimistically switch on the alarm, intent on getting a run in at 6 before the house starts waking up.
Your legs twist around your husband's, and you sleepily yawn g'night as the warmth of legs and the duvet surrounds you. You close your eyes, weary from the early start that morning.
And you lie there. Awake.
At 2.49 you finally open your eyes, knowing that forcing them to stay closed isn't doing the trick. At 3.12 you open the laptop, knowing that the morning will not only be rough, it will be downright painful.
It's my genetic birthright, this sleeplessness. As a child we would tiptoe around my grandfather napping on the couch (the very couch now residing in my living room!) and overhear discussion about how he just didn't sleep at night. As a teenager I'd meet my dad on the stairs in the morning, asking us to please be quiet as we readied ourselves for school, because mom had been up in the night.
Up til now, I can count on one hand the times I've woken in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. For me, it is always the getting to sleep that eludes. I lie still, hoping to force my body into rest. Sometimes it works. Tonight, it did not.
Am rumpled in spirit. Rumpled in spirit, and perhaps feeling the pain of the world a little too keenly.
Anyone got any tricks for setting down the weight of the world, just for a night? This Desperate Housewife could use them.
It's 3.29 a.m. Do you know where your sanity is?
Your legs twist around your husband's, and you sleepily yawn g'night as the warmth of legs and the duvet surrounds you. You close your eyes, weary from the early start that morning.
And you lie there. Awake.
At 2.49 you finally open your eyes, knowing that forcing them to stay closed isn't doing the trick. At 3.12 you open the laptop, knowing that the morning will not only be rough, it will be downright painful.
It's my genetic birthright, this sleeplessness. As a child we would tiptoe around my grandfather napping on the couch (the very couch now residing in my living room!) and overhear discussion about how he just didn't sleep at night. As a teenager I'd meet my dad on the stairs in the morning, asking us to please be quiet as we readied ourselves for school, because mom had been up in the night.
Up til now, I can count on one hand the times I've woken in the middle of the night, unable to sleep. For me, it is always the getting to sleep that eludes. I lie still, hoping to force my body into rest. Sometimes it works. Tonight, it did not.
Am rumpled in spirit. Rumpled in spirit, and perhaps feeling the pain of the world a little too keenly.
Anyone got any tricks for setting down the weight of the world, just for a night? This Desperate Housewife could use them.
It's 3.29 a.m. Do you know where your sanity is?
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