Awake

I awoke this morning at 2:50am. Is that morning? Insomnia is my life long friend. You see, my brain moves quite quickly from "Oh the baby needs a feed" to "What are we going to do about x, y, and z". And then its the "what ifs" keeping me awake. The worries of a day and a life are heavier in the middle of the night. They are nothing beyond ordinary family worries, but in the middle of the night they press on my chest and make it hard to breathe.

When I was little, I used to have terrible nightmares.  I remember my sister telling me, after one such horrific dream, that when I wake up I should think about nice things like fluffy bunnies and flowers...and it worked.  I would wake up shaking after a shark dream (I am terrified of sharke, by the way) and think about little rabbits on green grass, nibbling on daisies and drift back off to sleep.

Fluffy bunnies and flowers don't have the same effect on a 32 year old as they did on an 8 year old. I no longer dream about sharks swimming up the drain to eat me, and my nighttime ghosts are the kind that haunt most adults.

As the exhaustion of the long day that lays behind me settles into my bones, I am trying to remind myself that:

- Life has a way of working things out. 

- What goes around comes around. I choose a path of kindness, laughter and generosity (and red wine and chocolate, but 2:50am is a bit too early for both)

- Sometimes its better when things don't work out as you planned, even if you don't know it at the time.

- I will not starve, nor will my children...particularly with their well-honed "remnants of the cupboard" cake making skills...And when it happens at 5am, it'll be OK, because I will have been awake for ages.

YAWN