Mmmm, bed

I've been struggling with terrible insomnia lately. It's been a chronic problem for years, made much worse recently with all the stress; I am bone-tired, weary to the point of feeling a little bit crazy...but I have not been sleepy. Oh, I can get in the bed and doze off, but I can't stay asleep for more than a couple hours, and then at 2:45 and 4:10 and 6:00 I am thrashing around, pasty-mouthed, startling the cats, hyper-attuned to whatever kind of crow lecture was going on outside my window at dawn this morning, and on and on. And then the problem perpetuates itself, because wanting to scream at yourself NO, NO, for the love of God GO BACK TO SLEEP tends to rile you right on up, again, some more.

But I'm feeling quite gritty-eyed and hopeful tonight, as I write. I went back to yoga class today, for the first time in nearly two months...and let me tell you, I was genuinely scared. I once had the experience of bursting into tears during the final shavasana--the instructor had chosen that day to sing to us, in Sanskrit, and what she said I don't even know but it was as if she had flipped a switch...and this was before all the recent drama and trauma in my life. When I mentioned that I was worried about wringing emotions out of myself, earlier, I wasn't even remotely kidding. But I took my new mat--it has red koi on it!--and dragged my anxious self into the studio this afternoon, and it was...well, needed. I didn't cry. I did sweat like the proverbial whore in church, frustrated at all the ground I'd lost in just a few weeks...but I know it'll come back sooner than it would have, if I'd been slacking off for a year or five. My shoulders are feeling deeply, deeply worked, right now, and I am hoping desperately that I will be able to topple into bed like a felled redwood and stay there. For six whole hours, even.