Insomnia

So many things. I can't sleep tonight for some reason: mild sore throat, smallish headache, overthinking, ruminating.
On Monday, I returned from a two-week trip to Alaska with the boy I met from the online. That trip was our fourth date, and we loved each other in a vast and raw place, where the veil between worlds is thin. I might write about the amazing things we did and saw: periwinkle blue glaciers, the low clouds, the black bears ambling in our path, a million jellyfish. The nut brown ale from the Kenai River Brewing Company, flaky, cooked-just-right halibut, the fire in the wood stove in a house on the ridge line above Homer. The best parts of this adventure for me were the smallest threads hanging out in that veil. One morning in Seward, waiting for our boat. We were sitting on a bench looking at the harbour, and I had a cup of coffee in my hand. It was early and the air was crisp. I leaned against him, and we were quiet. I thought to myself: this, this is the sweetest moment, maybe ever. Easy, secret laughing. Watching him dreaming in the early morning light. Hearing him whisper to me: "I need you". On Friday, a dozen roses arrived for me at work. the card read simply, "miss you!" Because of him I am challenged to examine how frightened I am of trusting myself with this new intimacy and go ahead regardless, to dismiss my self-consciousness, to hope about things. He is strong and kind and sharp and also sweet with me in ways I never thought anyone would be.
Home now, there is a voicemail from a friend who now has something in his life he can't abide. I know he is not sleeping now, too, because this new thing he's got is the sort of thing that once you have it, you cannot give it back. My heart breaks for him. His voice is hopeless. There are two breast cancers, somebody else's crazy ex who is off the rails and possibly dangerous. There is the dear friend whose sister is being astonishingly horrible, and tears. But there is also sailing, and Cooper's big soft paws, and the golden sunlight of early autumn. The Sparkly Warrior Princess is pregnant and joyfully embracing her really-soon motherhood, her relationship, her new future. It is time to think about things like soup, and firewood, and rain.
I want to be open and fearless to all of these things. I want to be silent and uncluttered and available to every bit of it.