Episode 36: A Familiar Feeling

I gave up regular sleeping during my teenage years. It wasn't for lack of my mum trying but with school, all the various extra-curricular stuff I did (newspaper, clubs), homework, and my own interests, it went by the wayside. This only got worse in college as I'd have a full day of class, evenings of music rehearsal, hanging out with friends and then, oh right, homework. I rarely saw Cyn, my junior year roommate, as she rose at around 5 a.m. and I went to bed usually between 3 and 4. We spent far more time with one of us unconscious while the other did her homework/workout/whatever than we did hanging out in the room together.

There came a point where the exhaustion I felt upon waking each morning was normal. My muscles would resist as I'd haul myself out of bed, feeling gravity's heavier than usual pull. I'd pour the first of seemingly endless cups of coffee (or cafe mocha) down my throat and slowly the feeling would recede, draining out of my toes as the caffeine levels in my bloodstream returned to normal.

And then I would go back to mum's on break and snore on the couch for a week before my body shrugged off the perennial state of exhaustion.

I sleep more now than I did then, usually. I've gotten to where I mostly make it to bed by 2 a.m., though a very short list of people have permission to call later than that and do. Still, at present, there's not as much in life the seems to invigorate me to keep to all hours. That and my winter insomnia hasn't fully set in.

But occasionally I'll stay up, working on a project, reading a book, watching the latest season of a television series I can never remember to catch when it actually airs, or just staring blankly out the window--not fully awake but not really resting either.

Then comes the morning with its inevitable alarm clock, text messages, and--in parts of the year--daylight. My eyelids haul themselves up, I smack the snooze button and there it is: the drained feeling. An old friend who has shown up again, not entirely unwelcome. I flash back to thinking about 8 a.m. history class, wondering if my roommate is up yet, thinking about the caf and whether or not I'll have time to get a cup of coffee and an egg sandwich before I have to be wherever. Or I instinctively wait for my cell phone to ring so one of my best friends, my manager at the time, can tell me where I'm substituting that day. The mornings she calls now for Excel help really throw me.

I miss the exhaustion sometimes, for while I'm sure it's much healthier for me to be sleeping, I felt like I got so much more out of my days then.

I'd say perhaps I've just learned to manage my time better but even I don't believe that.

Episode 35: Back To How We Used To Be

When we first became friends, we used to talk. Not just about classes and homework, concerts and lovers, but beyond. We spoke of esoteric and argued the ridiculous. People joined the conversation, phased in and out, tossed out an opinion and ran. We did the crossword puzzle together and debated the clues. We went to concerts and performances.

Now the world has run us over. We have work, families that have different needs from us, and things no longer seem as straightforward as driving down campus to grab lunch together was. Add to that national, local and global challenges that seem to rear their heads and be ever increasingly exploding in our faces: economy, transportation, health care, aging. We worry about our jobs, whether or not to have children, our parents, our siblings, home ownership, and our sanity.

We do not talk of literature, of abstracts, of an art piece we admired. What debates we have feel stilted and rushed with no potential other than wistfully wishing there was a side to things other than "bad." Our opinions are settling as we fling ourselves further into adulthood, our minds less flexible than during our teen and early twenties years. The energy that spurred us on, out until dawn, back up for class, work, fun seems curiously missing, replaced with perpetual exhaustion, endless cynicism, and an exhausting cycle of always behind.

We detox at each other just enough to hang up the phone, walk away from the screen, and realize that no matter how much that helped--a hug would have made it infinitely better.

This, then, is my new years wish for you--to bring our old conversations forward again, to call you for clues to the crossword that I can't solve, to tell you of what I've seen, to go to a museum together instead of watch reality television. There has to be appreciation of beauty and good and we need to use our minds.

It'll be a stretch, it might require some yoga afterwards, and it still won't be as good as a hug. But it will be something.