Midnight murmurs

00:50 am
Have been lying in bed for two hours and forty minutes and sleep's not coming. Normally, my best quality sleep is the first part of the night but either a)this will be turned on it's head tonight or b)I will not sleep at all.

Towards the end of last week, I had 2 nights of blissful respite. Here are a few things I did during this respite:

went to the pub listened to live music had breakfast in the garden and actually spoke to my husband over this meal walked along the thames from Datchet to Eton along a path brimming with wildflowers and buzzing with dragonflies lay in a field of buttercups in the warm evening sun went to the theatre ate ice cream laughed smiled felt like a human. Felt. Like. A. Human.

During these couple of days I wrote in my diary alot and felt lighter, stronger, calmer and far better equipped to deal with these 'bouts'. But now here I am just a few days on, scrabbling around in the dirt to find some of those pearls of strength I thought were mine and I just can't find them. Anywhere.

The only thing I know right now is that I don't know anything. I don't know why I'm not sleeping. I don't know what to do about it. And I don't know how long I can keep going on so little sleep.

Andy is in Ghana at the moment with work and I know he doesn't feel like this because he is my rock, but I'm just so glad he's not here for a little while so he can have a break from all this. I'll probably never really know exactly what this does to him, but I know it's not good or right or fair. Six years ago today (or yesterday - May 24th), I started writing what would eventually fill an entire notebook and it began something along these lines: 'My dearest Andy, this will probably be the longest love letter the world has ever known...'. Funnily enough, I wrote those words from Twickenham which is where I am now, and even though we'd spent the equivalent of just a few weeks together, I was waiting for him to come back to me from Guatemala. Which I knew he would. I knew one day we would marry, that we would have children together and that he would be the love of my life. And I still know that. So there...my previous paragraph was not truthful - this is something I DO know. And this brings me greater comfort that anything else possibly could.

Ok, now that I'm feeling less unhappy about the fact that I'm not asleep, I can warm to this subject and acknowledge how that paragraph was wrong again. I DO know that I am very, very lucky to have the support of other friends and family who have been amazing. What if I were a single mother with little or no support network? I'm sure it happens.

And the day after tomorrow, my mother returns from her two and a half year African odyssey and will be staying with us for a while. I'm sure this will help me, even if not on the sleep front, just on the practical level of tasks which when I'm so sleep deprived feel insurmountable. Even something as simple as getting the girls changed or taking Maya to school. Speaking of which, if I don't sleep tonight, she's not going tomorrow as it's not safe walking along the road with them when I'm in that condition. And alright, Maya loves school but it's OKAY if she misses a day. There's no point beating myself up about it. So the day might drag, but I'd rather the day dragged than I was putting my children at risk along a busy road. I know that sounds quite dramatic, but that's honestly how it feels sometimes.

I've been down here nearly an hour now and feel much better. Or at least, much calmer. Think I'll go and give the shut eye another go.