Covert Love

This year on New Year's Eve it was different, I hadn’t been alone since I was 16 and before that I had family celebrations, even if I had a severe dislike of my family’s way of celebrating, I wasn’t truly alone. I’d love to say that I had a great reason for my recent break-up, like he cheated and disrespected me so I get to be my own hero, but it is all circumstantial when you like the idea of children and not the actual wanting them, all the while believing it meant you did. What I really wanted was to make him happy and realizing that if I went on as I was, I’d end up with a husband I resented along with the picture-perfect lifestyle I detested. Most probably a divorce and a sad man that feels wronged when I give the truth so late, he doesn’t deserve that. It’s not that I am inherently anti, I simply never wanted this responsibility and with the impact a delusion of a loving family I never had, mine would suffer immensely. So, the truth of my wants left me on my balcony, holding my roommate’s cat so he could see the fireworks over the city. He didn’t like the commotion, but the cuddles won out.

Every year I think retrospectively on my New Year’s resolutions, if I can’t do something straight away I feel like it is fiction and it is delivered to the recess of my brain's chaotic library, which certainly doesn’t use the dewy decimal system. After oversleeping and crying I decided to make a list, nothing like a reset of the soul, but my mind went blank. I genuinely had no idea what I wanted, let alone needed, so I didn’t write a list this year. Who knew having no expectations of yourself could be both hollow and full? not me.

This year I have moved my room layout twice, I think I like it now because I finally put-up fairy lights that have always been accessible. Reading is a lot easier now that I don’t need to get up to turn the light on and off, my makeshift bookstack bedside table has the switch right next to me. The makeshift bookstack has a flaw, the books I’d like to read are possibly buried, some roam free on the edge of the stack but Tetris may be in my near future. When, on a whim, you sell your bookcase and a few integral furniture items, the books seem like an innovative idea, I swear. Both my reading journal and day to day one are set on my Tetris puzzle, so, I use them now. Journaling is nice, it helps, I wrote my triggers out and why I am triggered by it. I think my favourite was ‘being ignored,’ I like answers, good or bad they give me something. Ignoring me reminds me of childhood which feels deeply uncomfortable, I should try to get use to that. People seem to think trauma responses are toxic more often than not now, maybe it is toxic, but it certainly doesn’t give me peace so it must be challenged.

Headstrong changes are easy, moving furniture and simplifying life for myself is easy. It’s my head hitting my pillow that is difficult. I don’t know if you can tell my mind likes to run, sometimes a sprint and a somersault that makes sleep it’s least favourite thing. I have had some success with rest but sleeping for 10 hours every second day doesn’t do you any favours. Survival mode is in full swing which is handy for avoiding feelings but does little for personal joy. I have decided to take on my insomnia this year, it’s the only thing on my “list,” if you can call one thing a list. I want to be gentle with myself the way I am for others, imagine a world where my first thought wasn’t that I couldn’t even sleep correctly. I am taking myself at my second thought instead, my second thought is kinder to itself. My insomnia is multifaceted and making a simple judgement on it will only hinder me. It’s time to put myself first, for myself and not the people around me. As the youngest in the family not trying to be perfect to get recognition is hard, especially when I have strayed from the clear-cut timeline so often. What if I am anti? Maybe I am meant to follow my own road no matter the stares or comments on its cracks.

The goal isn’t to do everything perfectly however much my soul might want that, I need rest. Real rest. I don’t think I have rested mentally since my parents' divorce; it has been too complicated in my brain since then. Maybe my brain is meant to be complicated but I hope I can make it re-organise the library, at least have the books on the shelf. Maybe the books like the floor though, maybe if I rest, I’ll remember where the books are on the floor, maybe if I lay down they will just come and find me on the floor.

I’ll be sure to write my book of insomnia and add it to my stack so it’s not forgotten, I may want to be better, but I’ll always remember the symptoms that told me how to. It’s a sort of covert love.