I was awake a good part of the night, lying still as a corpse, worrying.
Worrying about everything.
I doubt I'll get a decent night's sleep before we leave. I feel as if I've already ruined our trip by all the worrying. I feel sick from all the worrying. I am exhausted from all of the worrying.
I hate this.
It sticks to me, even in the morning light. I get up heavy with the worrying. My back curls forward to ward off the worrying, my shoulders up by my ears.
I worry about specific trip-related things, non-trip-related things, every-related-and-non-related-thing.
My suitcase- how can it be big enough?
Am I a fool to take my laptop?
How can I memorize lines on a trip?
Do I have enough clothes? When am I going to pack? Why haven't I started packing?
How can I leave Owen for ten days?
And then there's whole other layers, other UNIVERSES of worrying that are so ridiculous that I can't even begin to relate them here. One must not let certain things out of their bolted boxes.
I always do this. I comfort myself with that knowledge. I always do this and yet, I survive. Well, let us be honest- I
try to comfort myself.
It doesn't work.
So. The very thing I need to sustain me- sleep- has been rudely cut away from me. When I do sleep, the dreams are so busy, so exhausting in and of themselves that I am no better at all for the sleep I do get.
Another thing to worry me.
I need to calm the fuck down. I need to go take a walk. I need to make that blanket. I need to go get my hair trimmed today. I need to start figuring out the packing. I need to
STOP.
It's a vacation. A real vacation. I'm not going on a journey to be tortured. No one is going to care what I wear. Everything will be fine and lovely.
Hell, one time when we went we lost our tourist papers. They still let us leave.
One time, we left our money at home. We still managed.
One time, we got to the airport
a day late. Life went on.
One time we got pulled by the police on our way into a park. They just wanted a ride.
And it's not even worries about things like that. It doesn't really have anything to do with suitcases or lines. It's just me, being crazy. I can feel it, when the crazy comes on. It's like I'm coated in a film of crazy and I can look through it but I'm still inside it, encased in it, hindered by it.
*******************
A million years ago, when I was a five-year old girl, it was just about this time of year, maybe right
after Christmas, when my mother plotted and made her escape from my father with me and my little brother to Florida. She managed, with the help of good people to get us away, to get us to safety. It all happened in the middle of the night. There was real threat from my father. He had a gun. He was a bad drunk. Being five, I could only know the very fringes of all of this, but I remember. And the worst thing for me was that my mother forgot my blankie. Yeah. I had a blankie. Hell, I NEEDED a blankie.
And when we got to Florida, my mother got so sick she had to be in the hospital, meaning that my brother and I were being taken care of by my grandparents whom we knew not at all, who were very old, in a strange place. And there were whispers and there were worries and there was no joy and it was a very, very bad time.
Okay. I remember all of that and it makes sense to me, suddenly, why I get so apprehensive before a trip. Why I practically make myself sick.
Will it help, this knowing?
I doubt it. Right now I want to reach back in time and hold that little girl and tell her that she is very brave and that things will work out so very well. But that she has every right to be scared. I would like to explain it all to her. Tell her in words she might understand that none of this-NONE OF IT- have to do with anything she did.
Because no one, in those days, tried to explain anything to children. Or at least, in my family. We just soaked up the fear and the worry and kept our mouths shut.
Well. There you are. There you have it.
Ms. Moon is psycho-analyzing herself again. I'm sorry. That's the way it is some days.
Shake it off. Bleed some of it out. Forgive myself for my crazy. Cry some if I need to. Okay. Yeah, I do. Need to.
Get on with life. Take that walk. Start a blanket for a grandson who is so loved, so well-cared-for that he doesn't NEED a blankie. Doesn't suck his thumb and will never, I hope and pray, have to be spirited away in the night to safety. The idea itself is absurd. Remember that I am not five years old. I am a grown-ass woman who has a life of unbelievable richness. That whatever comes is going to be okay. That I am going to Mexico for fun and love and joy with my husband, not fleeing a drunken man with a gun who is my father.
Man. No wonder I hate Christmas. No wonder I am so very anxious before I leave for a trip. No wonder I worry about whether or not my children are okay, okay, really okay in their hearts.
No wonder I love my good man of a husband so much. No wonder I love routine and safety. No wonder I am amazed at the very fact I am still here.
Wow. I feel like I owe myself an hour's worth of counseling fees.
Okay! Well, that's my Monday morning! How is yours?
Jesus. I need to go back to bed.
With my blankie.
Love...Ms. Moon