One is the Loneliest Number aka Insomnia - Episode 382

I seem to have some sort of mental block or something that refuses to let me actually fall asleep the night before classes. The other 5 nights a week I can pass out no problem, but come Monday or Wednesday night and I am wide awake wishing for sleep until it's practically time for me to get up and stumble to my car. It's hot tonight and I can't even sleep in my bedroom so I'm out here on the couch with the AC running. One of the dogs has taken over 75% of my pillow but it's so cute I don't mind sharing because it's not like I can actually sleep anyway!

Shannon's been gone for just a few days and is coming back Wednesday but it's been a disturbing glimpse into what life might be like once she leaves here for good. She's flying to DC for an interview next week, so she's leaving me to my own devices again. I suppose I should get used to it but let's just say it hasn't gone that well. Without adult supervision I have a tendency to wonder around the apartment, periodically checking my empty fridge, obsessively checking my email, watching random documentaries on TV, and generally feeling sorry for my poor lonely self. Not that when she's here much of that changes, since I have hit an extremely low point on the self-discipline/motivation chart, but it's the company part that counts. I have never lived alone with the exception of my last year in Florida when I went to school 18 hours a week and worked two jobs totaling 60 hours a week. When I was home it was to fall, exhausted, onto my mattress for the 2 to 4 hours of time I had between things. I do enjoy the no compromises factor of living alone, and when she's gone I'll have the entire closet to myself. But at this juncture that is no substitute for losing my bestest friend to the other side of the country.

Most of me knows that this is good for me...kind of like being well enough to be taken off the painkillers or released from the hospital, I am now well enough to lose my last crutch. She's held me up through all of the insanity of the last year and it is her time to move forward with what life holds for her. She's going to get this stupid job, I just know it, because I don't think it's any random coincidence that Amy and Joey moved out here and Julia is also moving back just at the time when she might go. I know it helps her out to know that her disgustingly pathetic sister won't be left without good friends around to keep her from going nuts. I apologize for the self-indulgent whining but right now I'm so sad and I can't help it. I know there are plenty of people who live alone and it doesn't kill them, but I don't care for it. I've always had a rotating door of roomates, friends, etc. It's no comfort to know that I need for it to be this way when most of my friends return home to boyfriends, girlfriends or roomates. Without someone to kick my butt into gear I have a bad tendancy to find any excuse not to leave my house, but maybe that's what I need. To be totally left to myself to find it in me to push myself into doing all the things I need to do such as exercise, write, and whatever else I push off because I have a distraction. I can only spend so much time reading the same news on Yahoo before I will settle down and get my crap together.

One of my friends told me recently that she thinks that out of everyone that I'm doing it right. That I left relationships that I knew weren't right for me and have been making choices to become the person I need to be to find the person that IS right. She may be correct but that doesn't make the process and the nights I sit by myself unable to sleep, crying (which luckily have become fewer and farther between, the crying ones anyway) any less painful. Blah, stupid crying, stupid headache. I took two blue-green Advil in the medicine cabinet that I hope represents the sleepy kind. Hurray for being up in 4 hours.

P.S. Just to disclaimer in case my sarcasm is missed - I am SO incredibly excited that she might actually have a job in the city she wants (and needs) to move to...but she knows that, so I get to revel in my selfishness unchecked.