Don't Hate, Free-Associate.
I don't sleep a lot anymore. To tell the truth, I really don't like sleeping. Sure, I love the way it feels when I'm exhausted and finally get to turn off for a while (who doesn't?), but the fact that sleep is a necessity at all annoys me. It's a waste of my time. It keeps me from doing things I find more interesting. The fact that I can't go without it as long anymore makes me lame to my younger, more determined, or more amphetamine-popping friends. Also, I've been sorely disappointed by my dreams lately. The out-and-out nightmares have largely stopped, but when I dream, it's all anxiety, all the time. I'll be late for work or for rehearsal or for class, or I'll be in trouble with the law, or I'll be in some sticky and dramatic interpersonal situation that I will then have to negotiate my way out of. Very frequently, I'll spend the entire dream reminding myself about keeping some appointment, every few minutes panicking that I already have missed it and waking up to find that I've still got time, then falling back asleep and starting right in worrying that I only dreamed I'd woken up and checked the clock, that really I'm sleeping through the appointment even as I fret. Those suck. I almost miss my old recurring teeth-falling-out nightmares. What's more, my mother tells me that she sees my father in her dreams every night, so vividly that it's like visiting him. I'm jealous. Since he died, I haven't dreamed about my dad once.
Now, it's not like I don't think about my dad all the time, but this whole no-dreams thing makes it feel eerily like he's just winked out of existence altogether. I'll think about the last week he was alive--things like reading him Harry Potter in the hospital, driving him home in a blizzard, joking with him about how many sticks it took to get blood out of his dessicated veins (the record was two hours, nine times, four anesthesiologists), splitting a Bacon Turkey Bravo with him and watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind --and it'll seem impossible that that could have been only three months ago. It feels like yesterday and it feels like a million years, and the sad and frightening thing is that my memories of my dad don't feel all that real anymore. My life seems to have continued on in exactly the usual way, closing seamlessly over the sudden absence of my dad as though he was never there. That's kind of horrible. It's really horrible.
That wasn't the point I had in mind when I started writing. The point is that I can't sleep. Well, I can. When I decide I'm going to sleep I usually drop right off. I will not willingly sleep more than I can get away with, I guess. Which is why, at three-thirty in the morning, I'm watching yet another episode of House and deciding to stop ignoring my livejournal. The next step is to get compulsively introspective, because I'm unusually forthcoming with the personal information when I'm really tired.
That it's continuing on is about all I can say about life at the moment. Not that it's so terrible-- it's just a placeholder. I got this same feeling in France, that my real life was on hiatus while I spent a few months doing something tangential and that it would start happening again when I was done. I rather relished that in France, but I don't like it now. My real life, so to speak, will begin again in August when I move to Urbana. Now's not anything, really. I go to work and I come home and I go to rehearsal and I come home and occasionally I get to visit my friends or my boyfriend. The visits are the wonderful bit, but it always leaves me low for a bit after they're over. It feels like coming out of cryogenic storage for a few days and then having to go back in.
Anyway, Urbana. I'm moving there in a little less than three months. Andy and I will be sharing a really awesome place-- 2 bedrooms, 1100 square feet, three levels, fireplace, balcony, loft, exposed brick, free ethernet, and all that great stuff. I'm nervous and excited and really happy to be striking out on my own at last. The relationship is the same deal-- nervous, excited, happy. I'm not so good with relationships (understatement of the year), and after four years in my own strange and frequently dysfunctional bubble I'm having to relearn how one goes about getting close to a person. It's difficult, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised by how healthy and functional and mutually good this has turned out to be, and it looks like it's going to keep getting better.
These six months make the drama of the previous six months sit a little better with me, but I still regret the way things have gone down with Sascha. I don't regret my decision--much as I care about the lady, it was the right and ultimately the best thing to do, and if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have what I have now--but I do regret that I had to lose so much of what was, at the core, a solid friendship. We used to be so in tune with each other and get along so perfectly, and now it's only recently that we've been able to speak to each other without fighting. She wrote me an e-mail, just your basic "here's what I'm up to these days, how are you, let's try to keep in touch" deal with no drama at all, and I've been stalling about returning it. It's not that I don't want to talk to her (at least, if we can talk cordially) but I feel like there's nothing in my life that she'd want to know. Most of the things that make me happy she wouldn't want to think about, and none of the rest is worth sharing, really. Like I used to tell her, "If I'm depressed, and you say 'If it makes you feel better, I am also depressed,' that actually makes me feel worse." I will return her e-mail eventually, and when I do I won't tiptoe around the issue. We'll see how it goes.
Oh, and apartment pictures, for the curious:
Outside (on an unpleasant day, unfortunately):
Living room:
Kitchen:
Loft (3rd floor):
Not pictured: dining room, 2 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, patio.
Now, it's not like I don't think about my dad all the time, but this whole no-dreams thing makes it feel eerily like he's just winked out of existence altogether. I'll think about the last week he was alive--things like reading him Harry Potter in the hospital, driving him home in a blizzard, joking with him about how many sticks it took to get blood out of his dessicated veins (the record was two hours, nine times, four anesthesiologists), splitting a Bacon Turkey Bravo with him and watching Close Encounters of the Third Kind --and it'll seem impossible that that could have been only three months ago. It feels like yesterday and it feels like a million years, and the sad and frightening thing is that my memories of my dad don't feel all that real anymore. My life seems to have continued on in exactly the usual way, closing seamlessly over the sudden absence of my dad as though he was never there. That's kind of horrible. It's really horrible.
That wasn't the point I had in mind when I started writing. The point is that I can't sleep. Well, I can. When I decide I'm going to sleep I usually drop right off. I will not willingly sleep more than I can get away with, I guess. Which is why, at three-thirty in the morning, I'm watching yet another episode of House and deciding to stop ignoring my livejournal. The next step is to get compulsively introspective, because I'm unusually forthcoming with the personal information when I'm really tired.
That it's continuing on is about all I can say about life at the moment. Not that it's so terrible-- it's just a placeholder. I got this same feeling in France, that my real life was on hiatus while I spent a few months doing something tangential and that it would start happening again when I was done. I rather relished that in France, but I don't like it now. My real life, so to speak, will begin again in August when I move to Urbana. Now's not anything, really. I go to work and I come home and I go to rehearsal and I come home and occasionally I get to visit my friends or my boyfriend. The visits are the wonderful bit, but it always leaves me low for a bit after they're over. It feels like coming out of cryogenic storage for a few days and then having to go back in.
Anyway, Urbana. I'm moving there in a little less than three months. Andy and I will be sharing a really awesome place-- 2 bedrooms, 1100 square feet, three levels, fireplace, balcony, loft, exposed brick, free ethernet, and all that great stuff. I'm nervous and excited and really happy to be striking out on my own at last. The relationship is the same deal-- nervous, excited, happy. I'm not so good with relationships (understatement of the year), and after four years in my own strange and frequently dysfunctional bubble I'm having to relearn how one goes about getting close to a person. It's difficult, but so far I've been pleasantly surprised by how healthy and functional and mutually good this has turned out to be, and it looks like it's going to keep getting better.
These six months make the drama of the previous six months sit a little better with me, but I still regret the way things have gone down with Sascha. I don't regret my decision--much as I care about the lady, it was the right and ultimately the best thing to do, and if I hadn't done it I wouldn't have what I have now--but I do regret that I had to lose so much of what was, at the core, a solid friendship. We used to be so in tune with each other and get along so perfectly, and now it's only recently that we've been able to speak to each other without fighting. She wrote me an e-mail, just your basic "here's what I'm up to these days, how are you, let's try to keep in touch" deal with no drama at all, and I've been stalling about returning it. It's not that I don't want to talk to her (at least, if we can talk cordially) but I feel like there's nothing in my life that she'd want to know. Most of the things that make me happy she wouldn't want to think about, and none of the rest is worth sharing, really. Like I used to tell her, "If I'm depressed, and you say 'If it makes you feel better, I am also depressed,' that actually makes me feel worse." I will return her e-mail eventually, and when I do I won't tiptoe around the issue. We'll see how it goes.
Oh, and apartment pictures, for the curious:
Outside (on an unpleasant day, unfortunately):
Living room:
Kitchen:
Loft (3rd floor):
Not pictured: dining room, 2 bedrooms, 1 1/2 baths, patio.