Night-think

It is 2:30 in the morning. I wake up fully, as if an alarm has gone off, but there is none. A flurry of hard energy runs through my whole body and slams into the top of my head like a car hitting a wall. I look at my clock. I see the fierce digital numbers lit, as I consider them, by demon-stoked fires. 

“What the hell,” I think. 


I remember the coffee I had had late in the afternoon, and blame it for destroying this sleep. I vow to become loyal to herbal teas somehow, at least in the afternoons. Coffee never used to bother me the way it does now; my system, evolving into age–devolving is a better word, no longer tolerates the caffeine delivered in that sensuous, warm, rich flavour. Now the relevant parts turn the once clarifying energy into anxiety. I am betrayed and lost forever.



I look around my room. My thoughts begin to run, and I notice my inner bastard wrenching up the boards of my self-confidence. We talk:

“So, computer trouble yesterday, eh?” he says.


I groan. I feel a fleet of rototillers in my stomach, grinding me from inside. Cortisol shoots through my veins. 


“Yes. Odd password trouble, but the nice person at Apple fixed it, mostly,” I mutter.

“But after, that thing happened on ITunes where it…”

“I know, I know. It wouldn’t accept the new password, OR the old password. Thank you  
very much for reminding me,” I snip.   


The bastard continues pulling up the boards. With each one, I grow more anxious.


“You’re going to deal with it in the morning, right? ‘Cause you couldn’t go ahead and 
just reset your password last night. ‘Fraidy cat,” he chides.


“Look, I’ve done just fine in the past, but I’ve also had things go south, so I’m a little
apprehensive about the process now,” I say defensively.

“Well you’re older now, and likely…”

I cut it off. 

“Don’t even start.”


Earlier in the day, I had had a physical assessment at the gym. The trainer was kind, but where I used to feel mighty and fit, I now felt invisible. He considered me as just another gal in that age group that struggles with physical decline. He didn’t even hint at the fact that, before menopause, I had likely been this close to actually flying!  Now it was time for me to step aside and suck it up as nature deconstructed me–stripped me of my tone, and by the way, nobody really cares; there’s hockey on tonight.  


I’ve been noticing my shoulders wrinkling like overripe mangos. I feel thickening around my middle like I’m wearing a subcutaneous corset of cheese and not in a good way. Everything seems to be giving up and giving in to gravity–racing for the ground. 


        I am a walking glacial meat avalanche. 


To be clear, the trainer wasn’t a bad person. He was young–an innocent. He simply said the words describing my new paradigm. What the hell was I expecting?  There was no way he could feel the degree of my disappointment. How could he? He saw the external me, sitting in a chair nodding, smiling, and answering his questions. He couldn’t see what was going on inside–the Greek chorus commentating on my wretched, howling inner shadow, clawing at the hem of time, hissing at Sharon, the harpy goddess of wrinkles and dry skin, and vowing a comeuppance to Allistar, god of weakening muscles and disrupted sleep (the beating I will give him when I see him in hell)!  What I wanted right then, during the assessment, was a moment of silence or some kind of ceremony that would ease my pain: a shot of whisky, the slaughtering of a goat, or perhaps a demand from him for me to wax about the days of party-lines and carbon paper. I was tempted to describe some of my experiences goddamn it:

Do you know that I held a dying woman at a crosswalk? Do you know how fast I used to be able to ride? Do you know that I can curl my tongue into the shape of a cannoli? 

 I abstained though. I realized at a gut level, that it wouldn’t change anything except launch me into membership with the pathetic. And do I really want to have that jacket in my wardrobe? So now, in the middle of the night, my already delicate psyche shrinks before this slaughter of my self-worth. 


                      I feel under siege.


The bastard is relentless and quashes any attempts I make to calm down. I take a deep breath but the rototillers are many and I am denied ease. I think about turning on the light and reading, but doubt that I can concentrate alongside this internal tear-down. I get out of bed and go sit cross-legged on my couch to meditate. I focus on my breath. I refocus on my breath. My mind keeps pinging back to that fucking jacket. 

       “Look at where you are living and how much your life sucks,” says the bastard.

I ignore him and concentrate on meditating deep enough that I can lose track of this reality. No luck. I open my eyes and stare at my salt lamp. 

Yeah, that salt lamp really changed my life! Thanks for nothing!  

I give up and go back to bed. I am angry that the computer dealio upsets me so much. The bastard is still pulling up boards. I let him. 


“Do your worst, you meddling asshole. I hope you get a sliver,” I murmur. “And blisters.”


He bangs and pries and wrenches. I begin to fall asleep, wondering why the bastard, or any voices that I hear in the middle of night are always whispering doom and demise. Why is it always bad, dark, entropy-inspired cranks that take the night shift? Why the hell isn’t there a brigade of outrageous unicorns that gallop into my head and sing about how wonderful I am so that I awake refreshed, happy, humming show tunes? Do they not have my address? Is this a union thing? Jesus.


 Morning comes and with it a slathering of dread, but the good thing about having your inner-self reduced to a pile of wood and old nails during the night is that  it provides a boundary to navigate from: 

If you’re at a point where things couldn’t get much worse, why be afraid? 

     "You're aging–big whoop. Everyone does, so get over it. And why are you letting a stupid computer problem terrify you–you with your cannoli-tongue!"

 This is a better voice–like waking up with Samuel L. Jackson beside me. I leap out of bed and walk to my computer. 


      “Bring it on,” I think. “IT’S JUST A THING! IT’S JUST A GODDAMNED THING!” 


I turn on my computer and get myself a drink of water while the screen comes alive. I tip the glass toward the back of my teeth and feel the water run down my gullet–through my inner hallways and rooms where the boards and rototillers were during the night. 


“Let’s get this over with, shall we?” I say.

...And...everything...is...fine. There is no glitch. My computer acts as if it doesn’t know what I was talking about. 

Problem? No problems here! We’re all shiny and keen to compute for you all day long! 


Life is a ridiculous joke. I am taking my mangos to the goddamned gym.