Sleepless

I can't sleep. I don't know why, but you know how it is. You're thinking about everything. Suddenly you focus on all the reasons you can't sleep and you notice every detail around you. Just before I got up to write this, the sounds from outside my bedroom window became loud and intrusive. A train whistle blowing in the distance caught my attention and it made me remember autumn nights in Logan, sleeping at the Baugh's. And then all I could think about was Logan and how much I miss it, how sad I am that I won't be there for fall, and it will all go on without me. All the seasons are not to be missed in Logan, but of them all, autumn is my favorite.

Just before we moved Stoker and I visited an old poet-friend, Star. She gave me all the news of the USU English department. Sadly, several of my old professors have cancer -- two of them have pancreatic cancer, just recently diagnosed. Star says it's the valley, there's poison in the air. Another time I'll tell you why this might be completely valid. Right now I just want to say that even if the valley is poisonous, I miss it terribly.

I suppose part of the beauty of the human experience is feeling nostalgia. I mean, it's great that you can even feel nostalgic about a time in your life. In spite of the crappy moments, you know. Well anyway, I've only just left all those days behind me, I moved from Logan a year ago (the one-year anniversary falls on July 16th) and just barely left singleness behind on June 3rd.

But already I feel pangs of nostalgia for those days before Stoker, when I was learning how to appreciate being alone. If you can't appreciate being alone, it seems to me you can't appreciate having someone to love and share your life with. There were nights at the Baugh's hearing the train whistles just blocks away and loathing my life that was so barren without love. It's stupid that I can miss that, but in some moments, like tonight, I do.

It isn't that I'm not happy where I'm at. No way. This, the present, is really really good. I'm married to my best friend. I want to live my life with him, you know, the hard times and the good times and everything in between, while sharing all the casual times together like reading in bed before going to sleep or writing while he fiddles around with his recording stuff.

I simply think being happy where you're at requires the ability to look back and think you were also happy then. Or something. I'm not really sure, I just know that I'm so glad to have found Stoker. But I remember the times before him and how I was searching for someone with all the characteristics he has and didn't think there was a man like him out there . . . well, I guess I like to remember those times. It makes me appreciate him more.

Maybe that's what I mean, that remembering is important.

And I don't want to forget those nights at the Baugh's in the dark, staring at the gray ceiling, hating the loud train whistles (the Logan train whistles I now miss), trying to sleep while wondering if there would ever be anything other than lonely nights by myself. I was happy then, though lonely. But, now . . . I'm happier now and not so lonely. It's the contrast that's beautiful, I think.