I can't sleep. I get this way for time to time. My Darling snores peacefully beside me as I try and still my mind. Tonight I have endlessly played over my day at the restaurant. I was incredibly busy while I was by myself and I handled it just fine (with a little help from the managers). Still it plays over in my head despite my success. I lay there as the minutes go by aware of every little itch. Too cold then too hot and all the while My Darling sleeps. I am jealous of him. He naps too, an act I never accomplished except when I was pregnant and when I substituted naps for actually sleep. I know he doesn't sleep well when I am restless so I feel the need to try and be still. It was more than I could do tonight so I crept out of bed and came to the computer to empty my brain a little.

I applied for a job yesterday. It is a writing job, technical writing, but unlike the other positions I have sought it is entry level so I am hopeful that my years of experience makes me attractive over the normal entry level crop. It's also a closed end contract position so my age shouldn't be a discouragement. I am tired of waiting (in both definitions of the word). The stress of the job gets to me and the lack of intellectual challenge leaves me unfulfilled and frustrated. Makes it hard for me to enjoy my life outside of work (hard but not impossible, My Darling and Baby Boy certainly give me so much to feel good about.) Think good thoughts for me.

I just heard some very sad news about a long lost friend. She and I spent out youth in pursuit of adventure, bicycling around town, through the woods and even over into Canada. She is four years older than me. She introduced me to a few bad habits (smoking and drinking, although at the time my drinking was minimal). She also was my first room mate. She was my first real best friend. I have had some bad luck with best friends. When she was struggling with her homosexuality (I didn't know) she got twisted up with a strange couple who encouraged her to break off her engagement with her fiance (probably a good thing as it turned out) and move in with them in a sort of threesome arrangement. It wasn't healthy for her and she suffered for it. I was not someone that the strange couple cared for being, well pretty normal in comparison, so the convinced her I was not a real friend and she wound up moving out suddenly taking with her much of our household (most of which was hers and she was entitled to.) It's wasn't the moving out or even the taking the stuff, it was the suddenness (while I was at work), the lack of warning and the vindictiveness (she had the electricity and heat turned off because they were in both of our names and she even took curtains and the only phone). I was left scrambling. I was also pretty hurt.

I recovered, of course, and eventually she did as well abandoning the couple and alcohol and finally finding someone to love who loved her back. We mended fences at some point but never truly reestablished our friendship. Years later I heard through my mother (long time friend of her mother) that she had MS. I asked for her email and attempted to rekindle some kind of relationship. Unfortunately that proved impossible as she and her girlfriend communicated solely by e-card and I didn't have any idea how to respond. I was able to get a photo of my old friend and the woman she loved and I was able to be happy for her. Now that you have the back story here is the news. She is pretty much gone for all intents and purposes. Her mother e-mailed to tell me that she has no connection with with world and sits blankly awaiting her exit. She has withered away to next to nothing and the picture that comes to mind is a sunken skeleton of my childhood friend.

I had no idea how to respond to my mother's friend. There seems no words that could possibly bring any comfort to a woman who is slowly losing one of her beloved little girls. A child is forever, they grow up before your eyes but they never stop being that precious, tiny little baby, smiling little toddler, or adventurous youth. The pain must be excruciating. My heart aches for her. In the end of the email she complements my Baby Boy and wishes me a nice Easter. She is a wonderful person and she is suffering and still she has kind thoughts of me and mine.

It seems that while the day at the restaurant occupies my active thoughts it is the underlying emotional response to my friends fate that keeps me up. I lost my friend so long ago I don't feel the loss so much as I feel empathy for her mother. I hurt for her. That is what I have carried my whole life. It is the nature of my gift and the demon of my illness. I hurt for others, I develop a very real and intense emotional connection to their pain and it is very hard to distance myself from it. I sit here crying for the woman who is right now losing her world.

My son cries softly in his sleep, just for less than a minute and he returns to peaceful slumber but I am reminded that I am a mother and I hope not to know this pain for real.

I hear My Darling stirring above, I need to try and sleep again, now that I have let some of this go.

I wish you Peace

~alison~

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