I’m used to waking up in the middle of the night with anxiety, and I can get it over just about anything—a trip planned, an early morning obligation, a meeting with someone I don’t know well.
I also wake up in order to relive the previous day or week, doing it right this time. I hear the voices in my head, replay the conversation so that this time I give the right comeback, or this time I don’t make a fool of myself, or this time I don’t hurt someone’s feelings.
I can play that game for hours, in the middle of the day or night. I relive entire years of my life until I finally wake up and realize I needed to live it just the way I did the first time.
Whether I needed to or not isn’t the point. It’s what happened. It’s over. Please, mind, can we move on now to the present and try to live this moment instead of reliving the past or planning the future?
The other reason I wake up in the middle of the night is that my sleep pattern was severely compromised in the final months of Adrian’s life, when he began to have a lot of trouble sleeping and then finally in the last month or two, stopped sleeping at all.
So I am grateful these days for six or seven good hours, and try not to panic when that doesn’t happen.
But last night I woke up at 3 a.m. inspired with ideas—ideas for the play I’m writing for a class I’m taking at the local community college. It’s still worrisome to be awake at 3 a.m., but so exciting to have ideas.
For the last two years I’ve been thinking about writing something—a novel, a play, what? Because I was unable to commit to anything big, I joined a local writing group and let whatever came out come out.
These short pieces, mostly personal essays but not confined to that form, began to pile up and that’s how this blog came about. I discovered I liked to write them, and I’ve found a few people who like to read them, too.
Sometimes I’ll be inspired by an idea for the blog, but it doesn’t wake me up at 3 a.m. If I have to, I can just write it the morning of my publishing date.
This play, on the other hand, took flight once I began it. I could see the stage and watch the movement. I could hear the characters talk. (Why not, they’ve been talking in my head for years!)
I want to work on this play all the time.
Nothing has consumed me like this in years, and it feels good.
Of course, since I’m bipolar, I have to keep a little eye out for mania. A touch of hypomania is sure fun, though.
