Sometimes I Can't Sleep

Sometimes I can't sleep.

I can't even blame it on the kids this time. It's not that I'm not tired; I'm beyond exhausted. I haven't slept properly consecutively since around 2000, despite my habit of leaping into the bed like a gold-medal gymnast by 8 pm.

When I do sleep, nothing - and I mean NOTHING - can wake me. I have slept through tornado watches; mysterious fire alarm battery chirps (come on, it happen to everyone); and malfunctioning burglar alarms. It's disconcerting actually. Lest you think I'm well rested, bear in mind that this only occurs in spurts...and I'm convinced I need many more hours of sleep than the average person. (Please do remember that there's nothing "average" about my whac-a-mole life!)

But nights like this one are different. A few hours ago, I battled to keep my eyes open just to make it through the afternoon, and now they won't close.

Instead, the Doppler Radar inside my brain - unfettered by mundane activities like making lunches and shuttling carpools - blips and twirls. I fret that my sweet baby girl sprawled out in bed next to me is almost my size - practically a third adult in the bed (yes, my bed because at least I know she's safe). I wonder if her nightly visits will ever cease...and whether she'll ever sleep under any roof but my own.

The WHATIFs Grow Up

The whatifs  have a way of sneaking up on us, edging their way in through cracks in the veneer.

We ward them off with a smile on our face; with sleeping pills; with best-laid plans.

Some of us, vulnerable to anxiety's Machiavellian maneuvers, have learned to ignore the whatifs, or rather deny them. We stay busy to hide from them. We run. We play. Or we use exhaustion as a means of defense (they can't attack while we sleep).

Still, the whatifs  are patient - content to lie in wait, satisfied knowing they soon will have the chance to stretch their tentacles, regenerate and multiply.

A movie theater shooting. A marathon bombing. A child abused by a teacher. An autistic girl found face-down in a lake. A friend diagnosed with late-stage pancreatic cancer.

Each of these tears down our defenses and allows the whatifs to burrow in...stronger, scarier, realer.

Shel Silverstein/Where The Sidewalk Ends

The night before a school camping trip, my son asks, "Whatif  I sleepwalk into the cave and get eaten by a bear or lost forever?" What an outlandish whatif,  I think, instantly realizing that MY whatifs once were outlandish, too. Are they still?

It's much harder to combat whatifs when they've become so real.

The whatifs  no longer are about my own mortality or suffering. They dance around the people I love. Whatif  something endangers them? Or prevents me from protecting them? How can I shield my nonverbal daughter from a predatory world? Whatif  my son doesn't make it to the hospital in time when his shunt fails? Whatif  I abandon them, or rather, WHEN I abandon them in death? What will happen then?