I'm having trouble sleeping. It's twenty after four in the morning, and I don't feel the slightest bit tired.
I've been thinking a lot about death. My death, specifically. It's terrifying and wonderful to not know when it's coming. But I teeter more towards the terrifying. I worry about my parents having to bury me. I worry about my husband outliving me. Most of all, I worry about my son being too young to understand my death. Mostly about that.
Right after I had my daughter, I started to have anxiety attacks at night, when the house was silent and asleep, about the world ending. I imagined what I'd have to tell my daughter as the strings of the world collapsed around us. I pictured a gorgeous, long speech that somehow put us both at ease about our imminent deaths, and it would be soothing and not frightening at all. After I had my son, I stayed up at night, riddled with anxiety about dying in my sleep, leaving my son alone in a house with his mother's dead body.
That anxiety has since calmed down. I'm still terrified about dying before (what I assume is) my time, and the bleak finality of death is so sad. I can't really say if this is a shared part of the human condition. I don't really ask about it, because I don't want to be a downer. Nobody likes talking about death.
The point here isn't to be a downer, though. The point is this: being preoccupied with when I could die (and I mean, I could die as I type this) brings so many amazing, positive things into my brain, and ultimately, I wind up smiling, despite the grim topic.
Tonight, as I laid on the couch, thinking about death, thinking about how much sleep feels like death, and like how much I fucking want to sleep, I started staring at my hands and thinking about who else had held them.
I thought about how my hands, at an age that didn't appreciate the gravity of what they were doing, held my daughter right after she was born, marveling over the tiny, fragile, beautiful thing that I had just given birth to. How my hands had dressed her, and tickled her small feet, and held her so close to me, because even though I didn't understand how or why, I loved this small, screaming, giggling thing that smelled like the cleanest baby soap all the time.
I thought about all of the arguments with her father where I used my hands to expound upon my hurt and my anger and my frustration, because my words weren't enough. I thought about my hands signing the separation of custodial rights that I signed when my daughter was six. I was only twenty five at the time, and I hadn't really done much that could be considered grown up, intelligent, or selfless until then. One day, maybe my daughter will understand that my hand signed that separation because it was the right thing to do for her. She was miserable with me around, and I couldn't keep weighing us both down like that.
My hands were the instrument that I used to write, and those words helped me meet Allen. I remembered the awkwardness of our initial meeting, and how that melted away instantly. How I wanted nothing more than to put my hands in Allen's, and to keep them there. I thought about writing down the things he'd say in his sleep, and how I'd write them down when they were particularly amusing. How much that made me love him. How wonderfully vulnerable Allen let me be, and how he did his best to understand me and my insecurities. I loved Allen so much.
When I gave birth to my son, his umbilical cord was wrapped around his neck so hard that my contractions were choking the breath out of him. He was so blue, and he wasn't breathing. Allen and I were terrified. The death that I've always been so preoccupied with could have been my son's, and he hadn't even gotten to live yet. But my wonderful doctors being as talented as they are, and the glory of modern medicine being what it is, Gabriel came out of it just fine. And eight years later, my son still loves to hold his mommy's hand and make her laugh. I love him for that. And so many other things.
I thought about the last time I saw Dan, leaving his car, saying goodbye, and how hard I was crying. I remembered grabbing his face with my hands, saying, "I love you", and then turning immediately and walking away, because I knew I wouldn't hear an I love you in return. I've written myself as a victim so much, but every single part of me is glad I'm not with Dan anymore. Hands and all. I loved him, despite my failings, and despite his, but what an awful pair of people we were.
And then I thought about my husband, sleeping in our room. And I love him so much. More than Chris, and Allen, and Dan. Derek doesn't try and understand me, he just loves me. And I don't think the former means the latter is impossible. Even though I can't sleep, I sneak into our bed randomly throughout the nights, and I wrap myself around my husband and kiss him right between his shoulders and whisper to him how much I love him.
And oddly, these things make it so sad to know that one day, I'll simply stop existing, but it makes it so amazing that I do right now. I've done so much, and experienced so much. Far more than most other people have. I'm extremely fortunate. I've lived. I'm not just alive.
These are the things I think about when I can't sleep, and I can't sleep a good deal of the time. Even so, and even knowing that I can't sleep because I'm anxious, I'm still thankful.
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