Nighttime Epiphanies

I don't want to work more. That wasn't the intended trajectory.

Nevertheless, I started an increased client schedule this week.

I need the money.

I knew it would be an adjustment, but the migraine was a surprise.

It shouldn't have been.

Too many emotions. Too many traumas. Too many hurting people out there.

And me with no cleansing ritual to speak of.

Like the thing I hate to be called, listening to the litany of abuses for twenty-five hours was simply too much.

Shudders wrack my body.

Is anyone else experiencing deep-down, bone-level chills? I started feeling cold days ago. Not cold, exactly, more like seeped in chill.

An inside-out cold emanating from within. Exploding shards of ice originating in my marrow. A shivering, prickly, electric kind of chill that makes me long for the sun.

But there was no sun to speak of.

So yesterday, around mid-afternoon I dove under my covers in pain. Even the hint of light was excruciating. Every errant noise drill-picking into my brain. The dogs' barking ~ sheer agony.

I slept like the dead. Eight hours of inky blackness, uninterrupted painless bliss.

I woke sure it was morning. It was close, several minutes past midnight. My partner had just come to bed. It took a moment to realize that the pain was gone and when I did, I tried to fall back to sleep.

Though always a risky gambit, the odds were good. I snuggled into John's arms, exchanging murmurs of love.

Reggie popped up from his deluxe orthopedic throne and passed out between us.

Fiona, as usual, was burritoed deep down under the covers. Her warm little body pulsing heat on my bare calves.

Heaven.

I managed to drift a bit, reaching that nebulous state in between consciousness levels. I floated for a time in my love raft, enjoying the peace of the night.

As swiftly as sleep had taken me earlier, wakefulness hijacked my plans.

I gave it the ol' college try, but apparently, my subconscious never attended University.

I got up and started to write.

Throughout my twenties and most of my thirties, I was a barfly. I would fly to the nearest bar as soon as the workday ended and stay until close.

The celebratory feeling of surviving another day of work permeated these establishments. Raising glasses with my fellow patrons, I'd drink away the fact that I had to get up and do it all again in the morning.

I was a regular at several bars. The Tavern, a bar close to my office and my heart, had a glass of wine on the ready for me several times a week. I was known and it was as a drinker.

After knocking back a glass to take the edge off, shots would appear. Slim shooters rimmed with sugar and a lemon on standby. After a shot or two, the night inevitably turned fuzzy.

Details became amorphous shapes on the edge of my memory.

I'd stumble home in the wee hours and collapse into bed. If I were lucky, I'd get four hours of rocky sleep before preparing for the next workday.

These are the times I seem to reflect on when I find myself on the wrong side of midnight.

And always, they are wrapped in thick sheets of glittery gratitude for the life that I now have.

Chaos turned to peace.

Scarcity turned abundant.

An empty glass turned into a full heart.

© Kelley Murphy, 2023.

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