The Arms of Slumber

I believe it was 2012. The last time I remember waking up from a restfull sleep. After that morning everything became so complicated that insomnia became my only companion under the silence of long nights. Between scraping to survive while supporting an unsupportive husband and realizing just how codependent I was on him, my nights became a safe haven of self hatred and lack of love for myself.

I dont thing I had ever fully realized just how many universes can fit into the span of a single minute until I became a slave to sleepness hours. Time runs so much slower when all you can do is lay in bed alongside a fully asleep companion feeling slightly resentful to not be in their place. Oh, how I miss the joy of drifting slowly into a the warm embrace of a mid afternoon slumber.

I should have known when I chose to follow my fathers footsteps in life that Id end up absorbing some of his bad habits as my own. Chosing a career that requires insane hours and long nights brings with it an entire menu of consequences, such as bad eating habits and a constant string of harsh critiques, and I am my fathers daughter, I have inherited a parade of traits from him, insomnia being the most obvious one. I daydream much more than I dream. It was not until his untmely death that he got to rest and I chose not to follow his lead on thet one.

Last year, while locked inside my own mind during the COVID pandemic, I found myself wondering what would the future hold, so made a resolution that planned for the far future, finally starting my retirement fund, and this year, I have resolved to make sure I am here to enjoy it when the time comes. I dont want to children to be like me, to allow themselves to be consumed by their careers for so long, to drown themselves in a sea of anxiety and long, dragged on hours of slow moving time as they resent their loved ones for drifting peacefully into the arms of a slumber without them.

With that in mind, my resolution is simple. I will stop working when my work day ends. As my home office period continues indefinately and my peers are fully aware of my whereabouts constantly, I have allowed my work to overflow into my personal life. Every notification, every email, every phone call that comes throught the most inadequate times of day, I will no longer be availuable. Work ends as work ends.

I will no longer force myself to eat in front of the computer screen and order cheap take out because I suddenly realize it is almost midnight and Im too tired to make myself a meal that I used to love to cook. I will no longer ask my husband to go ahead and watch an episode of our favourite show by himself because my boss needs me to do this extra bit of work in the middle of the night. I will not forgo of petting my cat for twenty minutes when he come to snuggle me in the morning because I feel obligated to check if there are any early emails I can reply before work actually starts.

A resolution so simple that should come naturally and, yet, as I lay awake in my bed trying to stop thinking about profits margins and revenue, dreaming of the perfect powerpoint presentation, a greater challenge has never seemed more enticing than that of learning to love my life again.