Satisfaction

I can't sleep.

Lying in darkness for two hours when earlier I could have fallen asleep at 5pm.

I know it's not that late, but when work is at 7am I try to get a early night. Seems forever possible to have a solid nights sleep-whether it's interrupted with different dreams or lying awake for ages with a headache.

Again, I'm kept awake thinking about mum, and love. I think about stress, and living, the hypocrisy of my nature-my attitude kept in. I know exactly how I want to live, yet I'm the one who restricts myself the whole time. I'm the one giving myself the headache-no-one else. We don't choose to feel awful, but we choose from our learned responses how to react to it all. I need to learn more, asap.

The thoughts at the front of my mind today, tonight, keeping me awake is the notion of love and it being swept away. I always think of mum. Her life. Mum had the most pain in the arse 12 years of her last years. Suicide. Single parent. Alcoholic father. The dating scene, 'hollie am I going to be lonely forever?...' cancer.

Mum was lonely for quite sometime, until she met someone else. For 6 years, most kept at long distance was a love I had never seen before. A love of banter, a love of friends, a love of food and wine and going out for casino breakfast. A love for music and forever sounds. A companionship she never really wanted to throw away. I think of her moaning; her quivels and drivels over matters too virtual to put into context. In all the anxiety, it was for love. It was 6 years of arghhhblahhhhurghhhahhhmmm which kept them together.

Echoing in my head are the last two years. The climb for their independence, in a house together. 'The tv is too loud, i want to go to sleep, that room was left untidy'. Who the fuck cares-they were together, finally! Four years of long distance and then two years living but not in the ideal home, finally they got their own place, together. Mum had that house for a year before she died.

I think of love and I think of death. I think about me moaning and bitching and being grumpy and being too scared to feel and go for what I want. Just in case, something bad happens. It feels like a slow death already. Or perhaps a fast one if cancer is looming. I like to see things laid out on my hands like a picture from memory and drawn on squiggling about with sway. I think of breeze and sounds, sitting on my own. These are the times when you get the perspective. We don't sleep for a reason-there's something going on.

Mum finally had what she wanted, she had it for a year. That's my most distressing thought tonight. I think of me and my health risks just in case I get what she had and I think of future tests. I have seen her go through it and worst of all i've seen her live frustrated in-between. It sounds harsh to say, but there were times amongst the cancer free days after it all happened the first time, when mum would get so wound up about something so silly, I couldn't understand her rage. It clicks now though, as we all strive for perfect. Why would we want to give up anything else for anything if it affects our perfect? Or if it means more risk? We become strangely selfish because of this. Selfless selfishness. Live in squalor or live in choice? Though the alternative should be the unconditional too, just because of love. There are moments in my life where I have no desire for myself because the other person feels like that's all that matters, and then I'm happy too because of them just being in my life! I don't quite know whether that's self neglection, or just that strive for at least someone else to feel great because you know too well yourself what it's like when things are shit. Really shit.

It scares the shit out of me that I have moments now, where I'm not making the most of. The most annoying part is I know I have to take time to 'chill', which means time to sleep or stay in my room and most of the time just stare, just to try and feel normal again. It's like your head is a puzzle and the only thing you can find to make it fit together is you. That's all there is and no-one can do it for you. It's why I think of my hands, I think of plain paper (never white, a more neutral colour) and I think what there is in my life. I think of what makes me want to get up in the morning, I also think of times too scary one would just freeze in fright.

I see what I have and I see what I have lost. And so now I see what I want to build. I also see a process too. Getting upset and actually letting out the pain seems to be something I'm getting better at now, wet face tired eyes and headache sure is a change. From being completely numb and stark. It's all still too loud in the silence, but someday we will get there.

I don't want to live a life in fear, I want to live a life in know. Knowing and feeling and going with my instincts, I know what my instincts are and it is very hard when your instincts aren't quite met with what your desires entail.. It's like in that way I feel about people who have died. I have to live for mum; I live for the years she didn't have, and I live for the years I am lucky to have now.