So yesterday was a day of body-ness and relationship. My trainer moved my recalcitrant muscles to places they didn’t want to go–after first buttering them up with increased blood flow. My sweetie and I had a lovely dinner treat from my extended family…three hours of interwoven conversations, and excellent food and wine presented classically… down to the double-breasted waitstaff coats and the cheese cart. (Mmmmmmm… .) Around the time I thought I’d slip in a handful of blog-words right before bed, my A called. Two hours later I’d more than taken my 5000 steps and caught up into our togetherness.

Hm. School day coming. Hm. Oh well, and dive into bed.

…to at some point awaken like I’d been submerged, my heart racing as if I’d been dropped in an adrenaline bath. There was a nightmare, but it seemed more as if the nightmare was my brain trying to understand the chemicals rather than the chemicals defending me from the brain’s apparata.

I smoothed my mind. I slowed my breathing. I added a book, for insurance. I slept.

I woke, shedding heat like water sluiced from buckets. I single-sided my covers (front bare, back sheeted) and smoothed.slowed.book once more.

When the alarm arrived, I groaned. But the clock-math couldn’t support anything but rolling out of bed.

The wariness I still carry around sleep, though I’ve been sleeping routinely again for nine-ish years, stems from this:

I didn’t get eight (or even seven) hours of sleep last night.

What did I get? I got pools of sleep larger than a nap but not enough for rest.

At 3:30pm, I fade into fog, staring. Wondering how I’ll last until dinner at 7.

I don’t have margin for this “leisure,” but I don’t have fuel for anything else.