Losing

"Please let this be over. I don't want it to be over." Today, I think. It's finally going to catch up to me. But it hasn't. At least I don't think so. Not yet.

I finished a good book on Friday, right as the sun was setting. It was a feel-good-romantic-love-kind of book, about three kids losing their parents in a car accident and the two single adults that inherit them, and fall in love with each other. Totally "life as we know it"-esque and yet, as I finished that last page I took a couple deep breaths, and smiled in satisfaction. It had its corny moments but I love those too. The handsome bachelor hero-turned father to three orphans was a professional golfer, and all the golf talk made me wistfully long to go golfing...with or without a good looking guy to help me practice my swing. Then, this morning, I began "Open," the autobiography of Andre Agassi. It drew me in, right from the beginning. I have a fascination with successful people. I love hearing their stories, how they beat the odds. It gives me ideas for how to handle things in my own life. Andre is different. As one of the top tennis players in the world, a gifted tennis icon, he hates tennis. Loathes it. It puts his body in excruciating pain, yet he finds himself continuing, whether it's because he's addicted to the pain, the challenge or the feeling of triumph from beating the odds.

I've only read to page 20 so far, and yeah I know, he retires before he's 40. But his internal battle with tennis reminds me of a battle I have every night...with sleep.

Blame the warm weather. Blame the extra hours in the day. I honestly don't know what it is, but the past three weeks have felt brutal and yet so alive at the same time. Andre talks about reaching the finish line at the end of a match, because the end gives off a magnetic force. When you get close, you can feel that force pulling you towards the end, but just before you come within range, or just after, you feel another force, equally strong, pushing you away. "It's inexplicable, mystical, these twin forces, these contradictory energies, but they both exist. I know, because I've spent much of my life seeking the one, fighting the other, and sometimes I've been stuck, suspended, bounced like a tennis ball between the two." This is as close as it comes to explaining what it feels like for me to go to bed.

I've never actually understood the concept of sleeping in. Don't get me wrong, sleep feels good. It pulls at me, tempting me, willing me to close my eyes and give in. I feel these pulls all day long, some days I actually think that I could fall asleep right on the floor in my cubicle, I'm that tempted. But then, when I finally get home at the end of the day, I feel a different pull, one that tells me that I'm free to do what I want for the next few hours. I can play as Much as I want. The knowledge is like a high, I want to do so many things at once! Then, sleep sounds boring. I'm not accomplishing anything while I sleep, how dumb is that! I could be reading, jogging, updating the software on my iPhone, unpacking from my beach trip, answering emails, listening to french podcasts, doing exercises in my french and german workbooks, doing yoga, laundry, cleaning my bathroom, going to dance class, learning how to sew, playing basketball, painting my nails, baking cookies, organizing my room, vacuuming the floor, working on my needlepoint, researching cool trips to southeast asia/caribbean, looking up ideas for paris this summer, looking at bus tickets to DC in June, locating that free tennis court and booking a time, catching up on the phone with Splash and other people that have called but I haven't responded yet, looking into pottery and painting classes, practicing drawing still life, organizing the linen closet, unloading the dishwasher. Ok I'll stop. These things run through my mind as it gets closer and closer to my bedtime, like this force pushing me away from wanting to sleep.

Lately it's been getting pretty funny. I will pack my day, not even getting home until 10 or 11 at night, barely able to put one foot in front of the other. I walk into my room, look at my bed, and a switch flips. I'm not ready. Uh huh, no way. Now I'm full of energy. Even as I lie down, knowing that I need the sleep, I'm coming up with things I can do, you know, until I fall asleep. Texting is probably my biggest coping mechanism. I text until I can't keep my eyes open, and then I drift off. Or I play sudoku, but that's almost worse because I get that high when I win each game and that keeps me playing longer.

Maybe when I have kids, and a basketball hoop in my backyard, I'll play basketball each night in the summer, after the kids have gone to bed, until I'm tired enough to fall asleep. Haha. Right now I don't have a backyard or the space for a basketball hoop. Or maybe, if I have a tennis court at my house, I'll power up the court lights, switch on the ball machine, and hit a few hundred tennis balls until I'm ready to sleep. That would be fun. I've packed a lot into the past three or four weeks, each night thinking I've finally done it, I'm going to hit that point of total exhaustion and be tired enough to want to sleep, and enjoy it. I'm not there yet, I still feel those two pulls, one during the day and the other, at night. There are still so many things I'd rather be doing than sleeping. Not to worry, I still get in around 6 hours of sleep a night. Because it's a necessity, and I've exhausted my other options. Why did sleep have to become so necessary?