2 in the morning

I got home from dinner with my friend, which went so late and with so much laughing and good talk and wine (finally) that I missed the brass band I'd planned to see for Mardi Gras, but didn't mind. Walked the puppy, got ready for bed, watched a couple of Youtube videos of guinea pigs snuffling around - this is what I do now, because reading the news makes me insane - put on my eye mask, and shut off the light.

I waited. I usually have to wait awhile, but eventually sleep comes. I take a Benadryl most nights, which horrified my acupuncturist (I am now a woman who has an acupuncturist to horrify), but I would rather have the guaranteed sleep. So I took the pill and I waited.

But instead of falling asleep, I fell apart.

I don't know how long it lasted. I sobbed so hard I thought I was going to vomit. I got up and staggered into the bathroom. I sat in front of the toilet, curled into a ball of horror, mouth open, tears so wet they had almost no salt at all, and I wailed "My baby, my baby, my baby, my baby, my baby."

By 3:30 I was back in bed. The tears would stop, and then they'd start again, pumping up and hot without any apparent beginning or end. The deep and dwelling cramps inside me, the cramps of lost time and emotional energy and pain and possibility, drove me to cry harder.

I got back up, not caring about my body anymore, fuck all the supplements and the fucking acupuncture and the kale shakes every morning and all that shit, that fucking waste of time bullshit nonsense. I cracked my sole secret stash opioid pain pill in two halves, and swallowed one. I went back to bed.

It's interesting, that physical pain and emotional pain operate on the same neural pathways. The half pill did what I asked it to. I got heavier. I felt more calm. Calm enough I could fall into a tight, balled half sleep.

Five or six hours later I woke up sore, like I'd been in a fight. My eyelids swollen. I dragged myself into the kitchen, heated up yesterday's coffee, sat at the computer, and started to cry again.

The dog asked to go out. "Okay," I said. I suited up in boots and coat, face puffy and pink, hair askew, and we got in the elevator, slow and unwilling.

"Good morning," said the elevator man. "Happy Valentines Day."