First day of work and sleepless nights!
Surprisingly…today was a pretty quiet day. Roads were clear, no traffic jams, reached office on time…and there was actually parking spots on the 3rd floor of the basement! Hurrah!
Still…had a pretty heavy head at office this morning. Somehow, I couldn’t sleep last night and while hubby was sleeping peacefully like a baby next to me, I continued tossing and turning till about 2+ a.m. and while I was trying hard to count sheep…I started thinking of death. How morbid, right? But not surprising considering the recent events and news…anyways, it just popped into my head. But i wasn’t thinking of my own mortality. But that of the ones I love. And it just hit me right there and then….when you fall in love with someone - the type of love that is all encompassing and irrevocable - it rarely occurs to you that one day (touchwood a million zillion times)…you might have to face the rest of your life without him/her around. And there we have it…love and death. Part and parcel. And you know what? I don’t think I can face life without my parents, without Eric. I don’t think I have that strength in me to see the endless stretching future that contains only me, myself and I. And then I wonder if it’s better to quit this world first. As Grace Chow puts it in her blog, Dying Is, quote:
“…is how dying will be more difficult for the people around me than it’ll be for me. I, for starters, won’t need to cope with my death once I’m dead.”
And the quotation of “tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” came to mind last night. Is it really better to have known the soaring happiness of loving and being loved in return and later, pay the price by having to face the deep despair of losing your beloved…or to live life not ever knowing the extreme ups and downs of love but also being safe from knowing the pain of losing someone as well? And since I have chosen love without considering death…I was struck with a sudden fear of what I might have to face at the end of love’s journey while I laid there in bed, in the middle of the night. And it’s the type of fear that grips your heart, constricts your chest and causes tears to appear. And i quickly muttered a fervent prayer, one that I used to recite many many times as a child before sleeping….may god, whoever he or she is, keep the ones I love safe and sound. And somehow, that prayer was comforting enough for me to be able to drift off to sleep after that.
Still, the effect of thinking too much and sleeping too little last night flowed over to this morning and I was quite the grumpy bear. Not helped by the fact that a colleague totally ticked me off today. So I’m now listening to a couple of my favourite songs to cheer myself up, namely: The Way You Look Tonight by Michael Buble (though in my opinion, the best version is the one in the My Best Friend’s Wedding soundtrack), Someone To Watch Over Me, Breaking Up Is Hard To Do, and A Love That Will Last by Renee Olstead. Comfort songs in place of comfort food.
It’s now 11.55 p.m….just about bedtime. Fingers crossed…let me fall asleep as soon as my head hits the pillow….