The Project - Day 13

Yes, okay, I skipped yesterday. I could fudge, I could try to write two pages today and pass one off as yesterday’s news, but the truth is I was tired as hell and I woke up at 3 a.m. drooling on my keyboard. It briefly crossed my mind to wake up and fight the good fight but then I remembered that was crazy and instead put my computer away and replaced it with my pillow.

I wonder if I’ll ever become one of those “other people”. Will I ever adjust my priorities so that I wake up early every morning, take my sprightly constitutional about the park, give my home a quick once over with my all natural lavender scented organic cleaning products and then write a journal entry over a cup of fair-trade french pressed coffee? I’d like to think that in 16 years when I’ve sent the boy off to college I might have a shot at this scenario, but I’m thinking I’ll still be staying up too late, sleeping in too long and settling for crappy coffee. I’ll never make it in assisted living, pissing people off by being on the computer too late and wanting breakfast at 10. I need to start taking better care of myself so that I can tend to my own cranky needs for as long as I am alive. Between my husband and I, I doubt there is a retirement facility that could (or would) hold us.

I was a night person even as a baby. Apparently I was so bad at confusing night time and day time my mother was on the verge of brain death from sleep deprivation. The pediatrician gave her phenobarbital to spread on my gums. I’m not kidding. It was the 70s after all. And thus, my dependency on sleep aids began. Of course most of the time I don’t like to take anything, but when I do, I actually sleep with some regularity and I find myself wondering, why the hell don’t I do this all the time? What is that? Why do we resist taking drugs for what we feel are inconsequential things? Okay, some of us resist. My husband loves taking drugs, but then he used to make them, so I suppose he can be excluded.

Seriously, why when something is helpful, do I try to find a reason why I shouldn’t take it or can’t use it or it isn’t important? I’m not just talking about drugs here. I’m getting better about it, but when a friend says “can I help you?” why is the first response “no thanks, I’m fine”? I suppose it’s partly protestant stoicism, that ingrained desire to never owe anyone or anything, to be entirely self-sufficient. Probably being a woman plays into it as well, don’t be a bother, put others first, really, suffering is just part of having a uterus, dear. Right? Hopefully this mindset is dying out with the current generation but it’s still got root in my brain, this idea that if I’m suffering on some level, that validates me as a woman and mother.

Wherever this martyred independence comes from, it needs to die. It benefits nothing to pretend I have it all together, when the only thing together here is the zipper on my pants, if I’m lucky. So pass me the sleeping pill, for in the morning I have to drop off my child at preschool (without guilt) and call the service about help with cleaning my house and mowing my yard!