I’m sure that I’m not the only one waking at two in the morning with that annoying list of failure on one side and the 'to do's' you don't want to do on the other.
Yes, two in the morning waking and pondering on the mediocrity of my existence when by now other men of my advanced age had discovered continents, written great works, painted dusky maidens on
Two in the morning waking and considering the grinding repetition of same old same old, the uncertainty of it all, and the needing of numbness and the dark.
Two in the morning - how I hate that time.
There's a woman I know very slightly who is the probably happiest the person I've ever seen. Her name is Janet and it seems that nothing can get her down; not death of loved ones, or lack of money, or drudgery, or cruelty. Janet is a happy soul, one of those happy souls blessed with the ability to accept because, in all honesty, she doesn't think much as her apparatus for thinking isn't really very effective.
Sometimes I watch her delivering the free papers in the rain, a big smile on her face because she's going back to her council flat to eat pie and chips and watch Corrie on her old, non-flatscreen TV in colour. Sometimes she whistles as she walks, sometimes she hums or la – la’s, old tunes barely recognisable. She whistles and walks and hums and smiles and probably sleeps right through the night. No two o’clock waking for Janet.
Two in the morning and I am thinking, thinking, thinking when I should be sleeping, sleeping, sleeping. Counting backwards from a thousand in threes, naming islands from A-Z… Antigua, Bardsey,
Sometimes I wish that I had not been born with all these brain cells.
Maybe I think too much.
Lindsey Messenger on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteIt is the most awful time to wake and your thinking then is always about worrying things that seem sooooo much worse then!! I will think of you when I wake at 2am......now that's scary!! Good blog, if only we could all have the carefree world of janets ..
Nick Jennings on Facebook:
ReplyDeleteChurchill's black dogs never sleep Andy, it's just 2 in the morning hasn't got the distractions to drown them out :-(
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ReplyDeleteShame - I'd liked to have read it.
DeleteMy "two o'clock in the morning" is me not being able to drift off to sleep until 5-5:30AM, when another dose of whether-I'm-sick-or-not nighttime Theraflu that I end up resorting to AGAIN, kicks in. Can a person actually get addicted to that stuff? Don't tell me. I don't really want to know. Heck, because of my increasing memory loss attributed to human fossilization (<--that of which is even moreso due to sleep deprivation), I couldn't remember where I put that rat's arse I could give, even if I wanted to and if my life depended on it.
ReplyDelete*deep-thinks about What a Wonderful Life's remarks: "Two in the morning waking and considering the grinding repetition of same old same old, the uncertainty of it all, and the needing of numbness and the dark," comparing it to own situation before doling out SparkleFarkled "encouraging words"* It's amazing what a person can get use to
P.S. That Happy Janet of yours gets on my nerves.
ReplyDeleteWe all have a happy Janet in us somewhere Sparkle but only a lobotomy can find her.
DeleteNick Jennings they're not yours alone, take a look at http://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/docs/Foley.pdf and you'll see many have beaten them back over the ages :-)
ReplyDelete