The Wrong Side of the Bed

I woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning, but it was my bed, and that is just fine. Although I don't know what I'm going to do when you aren't in it, passed out with your head hanging over a pillow and your nasty mouth guard in, anymore. Despite the fact that after the first week or two I totally wanted my huge fluffy space back, I'm so used to your presence now that, like a child who has lost her security blanket or favorite teddy, I don't know what I'll do when there's nothing next to me again. I thought maybe it would work out that you could be replaced by someone else (someone I might actually be able to, you know, get some from), but my bad dreams and subsequent realization that that is not a distinct possibility have taught me that, like everything else, I'm going to just have to get over it.

Now that I'm typing this, I hope that it doesn't seem creepy that I will miss sharing a room, space, bed. etc. with my sister. Just because no one has shared a bed with a sibling long-term since Laura Ingalls Wilder doesn't mean it's weird- rather, it reminds me of that stupidly sweet ending to The Waltons where they all say goodnight to each other. Everyone needs someone to say goodnight to. Everyone. And if you don't have someone to say goodnight to, then, well, that just makes me want to cry. Go call your mother. She will appreciate your goodnight.

On the other hand:
I have been waking up alone for so long that the infrequent, sporadic times that I actually have a guy I like enough to share the covers with is like crack. There's where the problem lies- forget the sex- it's the sheet sharing that really means something. Even if I suck at sharing. I try. And then I can't get enough... even if my arm falls asleep or my hair is totally fucked in the process.

HOWEVER, screw my personal problems. Like our favorite tattoo artist said, "Everything's not always about you" (I would add a "my dear" on to the end of it, if I had my way- very Rhett Butler-esque- and I figure if you're going to say something mean, you had better be Rhett Butler-esque about it). So:

Everything's not always about you, my dear.
I know. Everything's not always about me.

And today, it really shouldn't be. Because I temporarily forget that even though we're in another state, when Lee left NC for Kentucky it didn't mean he was going on a jaunt, a drive, a trip section. It's for real now. And in that way that no one anticipated four years ago, it is really sad. And scary. And easy to forget when I'm all the way up here.

It won't be so easy to forget when it's Thanksgiving, and Christmas, and Easter... or when, god forbid the day comes, Mom is mailing off brown box packages to our very own brother in a foreign country, and not someone else's brother. I don't know what to think or say, really. Thinking about what could happen always makes me want to cry (or actually start to). And then, like some manic Thoreau on a stream-of-consciousness kick, I'm off- I'm thinking about what it all means, and then I look at the kids, the kids that aren't mine, and I want to protect them, and I want them to never have to think about anyone ever dying or even leaving them, even though it happens to everyone, and then I think for a split second about how I am always being left, but then how lucky I am that my family and friends are so amazing, and how lucky I am to have whatever amount of time I get with them, and then I'm thinking again about what could happen and what might happen and what will happen and then I'm so wrapped up and confused by all these stupid thoughts that I don't even know where they began, and why I'm upset, and what the real reasons behind any of it is.

And now I just sound like a complete lunatic. No wonder I always fall for the weird ones. But now, please, self: "Everything's not always about you, my dear."

It shouldn't be. But I'm so freaked out by the thought of losing the most important people and the least important people, all at the same time, and it seems like the spinning madness of it all will never slow down. Life's an endless cycle of gaining and losing, and happiness depends on nothing more complex than the balance of those scales.

FOR the past few years, I have been praying (when I am a good girl, and remember where I came from) for me to just be okay with whatever comes my way. I feel like a kid rubbing a magic genie lamp if I pray for a man, a job, a specific happiness- but if I just ask for contentment, for calm- to me this is like asking for world peace, starting with myself. If I am at peace with whatever happens to me, I can never be unhappy, at least not for too long. And if I have calm, if I am simply OKAY- then everything else will be too.

This is what I want for myself, for you, for Lee, for Mom & Dad, for Lisa, for my friends, for my kids, for anyone who has the tenderness and awareness to be susceptible to real pain.

Maybe I really am a hippie, except it never is about the drugs and the dreads, not even about the music- it really is all about PEACE.

xoxoxoBon