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Location: Home.
Listening: Silence.

Despite my various current ailments, I'm finding it nearly impossible to get to sleep. Whereas I drifted off fairly easily last night, I can't shut my mind down for long enough to even consider sleep right now.

So here I sit, wide awake, at half til midnight. I have to get up for work in the morning. I'm sick and need my rest. I can (and have) fallen asleep in an easy chair at a party of 100+ people, with metal blaring from a speaker inches from my ear.

But I can't now.

I'm reasoning that it's the lingering buzz from having chain-smoked over half a pack of cigarettes while talking on the phone with Marshall. I'm telling myself that I usually don't go to bed this early, so it makes sense that I'm not tired, despite not feeling well. I consider that, earlier when I had just crawled under the covers, I heard what sounded like a noise from the front room and then lilting music from somewhere behind my head. I put my ear to the wall and satisfied myself that some phantom was not playing with WinAmp (because, as we all know, intruders can't resist Belle and Sebastian--it was likely a movie track coming in through the windowscreen), but casually grabbed the antique Titleist wood that I keep by the bed and tucked it in next to me with the handle inches from my fingers. Just in case...just in case someone managed to hide in a cabinet or the silverware drawer and would wander on in while I slept. I suppose I would then...what? Chip his/her (I'm not discriminating when it comes to potential intruders) ass into next week? Brilliant, especially considering that I haven't practiced my swing in almost a decade.

Smoking again. More adrenaline tangible in my bloodstream. Annoyed because I suspect that I'm being a girl. I've always been able to sleep when Peter has travelled. I haven't really enjoyed it as much as when he's here, but I've always been able to. Trying not to fall into the superstition that runs in my family along with the empathic traits. I can't sleep because cigarettes boost your heart rate--not because anything is amiss. If something was amiss, I'd feel it--I didn't even really believe that there was an intruder; I was just jumped-up for a moment. I feel wired--not scared. I know what that kind of fear feels like by now--this isn't it. It's adrenaline. I'm annoyed that I'm telling myself this because I should know.

I realize more and more that I'm not the invincible creature I always thought I was. I am very human and very fallible and very vulnerable sometimes. Facing that is difficult because I've always been very self-sufficient and had ultimate confidence in myself. I still have a lot of that confidence--but I find myself using it more and more to fend off things that go bump in the night. I have become a woman who sleeps with a golf club in case someone manages to get past the security gate and into my locked apartment when the man I live with is out of town. Bah. My mother told me yesterday that she can never fall asleep when my father travels--that she usually works on household chores until she can't keep her eyes open and only then goes to bed. I told her that I've never had trouble sleeping when Peter was gone. I've never really fretted when we were apart. She said that she envied that. Bah.

It's midnight. I'm still awake, still smoking, still staring myself down.

Feh. I stand before you, an otherwise intelligent, rational woman who has a golf club in her bed. I will now march authoritatively into the bedroom, remove said golf club, and go to sleep. I'm putting an end to this. I will respect myself in the morning.

Good night.