Things I do in bed now

Yes. The subject of this post is going to be basically a bait and switch. Sorry. But here's a lovely photograph taken by my not husband in of bed years ago.

I've always had an unbalanced relationship with sleep. Either too much of not enough. Before Andrew I was a not ever enough sleep person. Prescribed all sorts of amazing drugs to help me sleep. None did their job.

Andrew and I met in college. Smoking. That's basically how I met nearly everyone that mattered to me at that point. He kept bad sleeping hours, and I kept no sleeping hours. This meant that we had all the time in the world together. Playmates to fill each other's dark and lonely nights. Just companions. He learned everything about me as I'm an open and ever-talkative book. I learned some about him, as he was a talkative but cautious book. The metaphor doesn't hold. He was my confidant, and he kept his emotions and lusts to himself.

We watched countless movies, curled on his bed together, into the night while his roommate, Mama Joe, slept in the next bed. We smoked thousands of hand-rolled cigarettes. I never had enough money for my own, so I traded things for his: my expired Phoenix Zoo membership, my Mesa library card, my food handler's card, an old ID from high school.  In the beginning I kept a list of the movies: La Jettee, Alice, Arizona Dream, all sorts of foreign and art house films; after about a dozen, I stopped keeping track.

Andrew and I spent over two years just being friends. Just best friends. Two years of art projects, movies, Easter egg hunts, chain-smoking, Cuba Libre drinking, wingman-ing.  At some point during this, I realized I like him, and I think he realized he liked me. But the bigger surprise was that I could finally sleep. I didn't sleep, because that would have limited our time together, but I could sleep!

When Andrew left school, I wasn't able to sleep anymore. I drank too much, and never passed out. I just didn't get back to sleep.  I went to visit him while he was housesitting. He made me watch Uncle Buck. I'd never seen it. It was cheesy and dumb and sweet; one of his favorites, he said. We watched the whole thing. Rapt.

Weeks later, I was flipping through the channels on TV and saw Uncle Buck was just starting. I stayed there; watched three quarters of it, then found myself awake at 5am. I had just gotten 8 hours of sleep. The first time in years.

Since then, I have watched Uncle Buck hundreds of times. It's put me to sleep hundreds of times. Because it's familiar, because it's safe, because it reminds me of a beautiful day with Andrew.  Since he's died, I can't bring myself to watch it. I'm afraid I won't have that comfort anymore.

So now, in bed, I watch House and Golden Girls and Voltron and She-Ra. This is so I can fall asleep without regret. I wear my old glasses so I can see the TV and not ruin my new glasses when they inevitably get squashed or warped in bed. I encourage my dog to sleep on the bed next to me. Because my life is so void of physical contact. I lay down on Andrew's side of the bed, but I never feel like I sleep. Zoltan (dog face) snores. Marlon Brando (cat face 1) visits every night, tries to put his nose on me. Spidercat (car face 2) visits a couple times a week, and crushes my ribs with his 27 pounds of pressure in one paw.

I also cry a lot in bed. But it scares dog face, so I try not to.

Here's a not as lovely photo I took of myself in my bed.