Insomnia Sucks.... (wish it bit too)

Here I am again, the rest of the world asleep around me, waiting for the sun to come up so I can get some sleep.


Night shift.


Had I known just how lethal being a night nurse could be, I ..........would have done it anyway I guess. I was invincible once, kevlar skinned and laser guided. Apparently with enough over-use and abuse even lasers begin to burn out though. Who knew? Which is not to say I've learned a damned thing. I still push when I'm supposed to stop resisting. "I'll sleep when I'm dead" was my motto for so long. Hell, it was my life. Not that I'm complaining. 


I will never be able, even in my darkest hour, to look back on my life or my nursing career and feel I've really missed out on too much. Yeah, there have been some MON-U-FUCKING-MENTAL (emphasis on mental) mistakes I've made, and from them maybe I have learned. Maybe not. Case in point, never trust a man whose first words to you are "I was just leaving town, but now that I've met you I really want to stick around a while. Can I sleep over?" Next thing you know it will be 3 years later, he'll be off chasing some fat, skanky red-headed drug dealing dominatrix and you'll be left cleaning hair out of your bathtub and sheets.

[redacted  for tmi]


To each and every man whose heart I left bruised, battered or broken...my penance is paid. I am forever sorry, and I still pay.


As if I didn't pay enough in the Army, or in the marriage that followed. But there was little of beauty there and I choose to forget most of that, and certainly have no desire to share it here or anywhere else.


All that aside, I regret no chance taken, no adventure or misadventure embarked upon in my frequent moments of youthful and not so youthful impulse. As a child of chaos, raised by two high functioning alcoholic  parents so engrossed in one another that my brother and I were less than superfluous, I don't think "normality" would have ever worked for me. In fact I doubt I even truly understand the concept. I certainly couldn't relate to the other nurses I worked with who saw choosing the border for their new wall paper as something worth agonizing and even sobbing over. What IS it to have that much...or is it that little...in life, that wall paper becomes so important? I will never understand, and I guess that is one thing I will thank my not so benignly neglectful parents for. 


And it's not like we didn't have fun. Nothing bonds a family like misdirecting tourists from a boat launch to a deserted gravel drive that leads into woods so thick no boat was ever getting out of there easily. Yes, we actually stole the sign that legitimately led to the dock near Moonlight Bay and placed it nearby at that deserted narrow drive, and they were stupid enough to drive right on in. I believe I still have the "No Trespassing" sign we stole from an unwelcome, encroaching resort that same afternoon. Of course who can forget finding the skinny dipping couple in "our" section of beach near Cana Island and stealing their clothes. We weren't thieves though. We dropped the ostentatious (of course) clothing, a piece at a time, shoes then socks then everything else as out of order and wildly strewn as possible, along a couple miles of road, leaving the keys for their nice little sports car for last of course, right next to the underwear, so they'd have to trek back another two miles to retrieve it. We knew...we checked every pocket and around the car too. 


Of course, given what Chicago tourists have done to the Door County of my birth and youth, turning a pristine paradise of cherry orchards and acres of wild flowers and miles of public beaches into ugly cracker-box condos and trailer sized lots for Chicago sized "cabins" more worthy of Sinclair than LeClaire (my Godmother's name)...well... I really kind of wish we had stolen the clothes, and the car! We called them, the tourists, turkeys at the time...I suppose because they clucked around cluelessly in ridiculous little flocks and didn't have the sense to get their noses out of the air when it was raining (legend has it that's how many a real turkey has met its demise). I later learned a new term from Jim, the respiratory therapist I worked with for years in the NICU. He called them F I B's, which stands, as you might have guessed, for Fucking Illinois Bastards. And that they are. I am reminded every time I try to find some beloved landmark to share with family and friends and it has been paved over, built up or otherwise despoiled and marked as "Private Property" for the use of ridiculously red white and blue clad windy city wind-bags. Just too trite.


Even more fun is driving behind them on the highway--widened for their convenience of course at the cost of God alone knows how many old growth cedar trees--the ones that give Door County such distinctive and fresh air--and having them slam on their brakes without warning in bumper to bumper traffic (another gift from down south a ways) and go from 65 mph to 0 in 0.5 seconds so they can stop, ON the highway, to take a picture of something they like to oh so condescendingly call "quaint". This is of course Chicago-speak for "soon to be demolished".


We used to pretend there was a point system (I know, not original, but very therapeutic) for running them down, the speed, manner and difficulty determining the points of course. I can almost wish we'd actually played that one for real...but I'm not really the type for such unsubtle revenge...though back then it would have just been preventive maintenance. It is a good thing I'm not Catholic though, where a sin thought is a sin committed. I'd feel the flames of Hades licking between my ice blue painted toes as I linger here. 


Still awaiting sunrise.