Insomnia, part III - this is getting to be a habit

There was one semester of college where I couldn't sleep.  I had recently moved to Chicago, I lived in a studio apartment with the best cat ever and about eight hundred roaches, and I really didn't know anybody.  I had transferred schools halfway through college and everybody seemed to already know each other.  I went to Columbia College when it was still a commuter school, there were no dorms or campus housing of any kind, so it was hard to break into the social scene.  I couldn't sleep at night, and instead I stayed up late watching reruns of St. Elsewhere on my giant, 1984 color TV that had no remote, so if I wanted to change the channel I had to get up from a reclining position on my futon and change it my damn self.  They aired St. Elsewhere at 2 or 3 in the morning, and ran 2 or 3 episodes in a row, in sequence, so I'd follow along and feel nostalgic for Boston, where the series is set, and isn't that far from the school I had transferred from.  Sometimes even that didn't work, so after the last episode of St. Elsewhere had wrapped up I would go for walks along Broadway, Clark Street, Halsted.  My husband tells me that his first clear memory of me is when he and his roommate were walking home from a late night out and ran into me at 4am.  I was friends with his roommate, who asked me what I was doing out.  "I can't sleep," I explained.  I remember that my husband - well, the man who would many years later become my husband, leaned in and hugged me when I said that.  I didn't expect it, and was uncomfortable.

At some point in the early morning it would seem ridiculous to try to go to sleep, so I'd plan on staying up all day, going downtown for class, and sleeping when I got home.  Invariably, I would fall asleep at around 6am, sleep right through class, and wake up at some point in the afternoon.  It was a cycle I couldn't snap out of, and I got terrible grades as a result.  I even failed a class for not handing in my final report.

In retrospect, I know what was keeping me up at night - I was trying to run away from myself, but it wasn't working.   At around that time I read Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar, and there's a line in it that I'll paraphrase, or maybe the Internet will find it for me (bless you Internet - first web site that popped up in a Google search had it!):

[W]herever I sat - on the deck of a ship or at a street café in Paris or Bangkok - I would be sitting under the same glass bell jar, stewing in my own sour air.  ~Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar, Chapter 15

I'd left Boston thinking that I would be happier somewhere else, but the truth was I was simply unhappy, Chicago wasn't going to change that.  I'd been running from my own head, reinventing my life in an attempt to change who I was.  

The week my husband and I got back from Montreal, I couldn't sleep 3 nights out of the first 4 that we were back.  I know why I'm not sleeping, I'm just not sure what to do about it.  

As it turns out, it shows that I'm not really invested in my job.  My boss had a talk with me my first day back - a kind of pre-annual review (dear God, have I really been there for a year?!) and told me that concerns had been raised about my performance.  I couldn't lie to her - it has been hard for me.  I never thought I'd be working there, would never have even applied for the job if it weren't for my circumstances, and throughout my unemployed year I was able to distract myself from my job loss by immersing myself in other things - travel, volunteering, writing.  It wasn't until I accepted a job that was not just a step backwards but a whole staircase of steps backwards that I felt the enormity of what I had lost.  I'd done the best I could with the situation at hand - got to know my colleagues, lost 20 pounds, grew triceps where no triceps were before; but the truth is, I never meant to be there, certainly not this long.

I actually really appreciated my boss calling me out on my performance, for a long time it felt like I could do a great job or a crappy job and nobody would know the difference.  It feels like we've crossed a divide, and become more honest with each other; it feels better to go to work... sort of.  Sort of.  

What kept me up at night in 1992 and 1993 was my brain working in overdrive, trying to figure out my life, and I guess it's not that different from what's keeping me up now.  For some reason I'm unable to follow through on my own instincts - search out new opportunities, pursue them, find more meaningful work.  I'm just so tired of looking, and so tired of interviewing, and so tired of rejection, but the alternative is insomnia, and it's really not doing much for me. 

Insomnia, redux

the painting that my high school boyfriend gave me for my 18th birthday.  Not a great photo, but I should really be asleep right now.

Once again, I can't sleep.  It's 5:30, but I've been tossing and turning for much longer.  Last night I read at Tuesday Funk, a monthly reading series at the Hopleaf.  I'd been on the bill for some time, and had planned on reading the story I titled "my boyfriend" and have posted elsewhere in these pages.  (Wow, that's the first time I've linked back to my own blog, how very self-referential of me).

But that's not what's keeping me up.  A while back I actually went and bought my boyfriend's wife's book, The Dirty Life, and as it turns out, it's a pretty good read.  Besides being an interesting story, it made me feel better - made me realize it was simply the pull of the past that was making me feel so nostalgic and whatnot, and it was nice to know that my boyfriend was doing well.  I genuinely wished him and his wife well.  So when I saw that his wife had a facebook fan page for the book, I hit "like", and posted the following comment back on February 6th:

Hello Kristin,

A couple months ago my NPR feed on facebook had a writeup about your book, and within the first three lines I recognized Mark from the description. I knew him in high school, lost track of him years ago, and although I've reconnected with many old friends through the magic of facebook, no matter what I did I couldn't find him (doesn't help that he changed his name and has no Internet presence). I've been reading articles about your farm and your book, and heard your interview with Melissa Block. What an amazing story, and what a remarkable adventure you've undertaken. Please give my regards to Mark, and all the best with your farm, your book, and your family.

JP

At the time, there weren't an inordinate amount of fans on the page, less than 300, and it flummoxed me that while she had responded to some other, less intriguing comments, she never bothered to respond to mine.  I thought about it, and realized that it was a bit ridiculous to wait around and feel insulted by a perceived facebook slight, when she wasn't even really the person I wanted to get in touch with.  My boyfriend is so off the grid that I'm not sure he has a flush toilet, much less a facebook account, so I took it upon myself to write the following note and drop it in the mail on March 7th:


Dear Mark,

Back in November, I had the strange experience of reading my NPR updates on facebook, and coming across a story about a journalist from New York who'd gone to western Pennsylvania to interview a farmer... and something told me right then that the farmer in question was you, even before I'd read two paragraphs.  I bought Kristin's book, and read it inside of a week.  What an incredible story, I'm really amazed at what you've done at Essex Farms.  I've tried looking you up from time to time, and now I know why I never got very far - I was looking for MG in Pennsylvania, and now you're MK in upstate New York.  I left a note on the facebook fan page for The Dirty Life, but I gather Kristin doesn't have much time to mess around on facebook, as she doesn't leave a lot of comments on people's posts.  I figured I should write you an actual note, since posting a comment on the facebook fan page of your wife's book is a pretty disconnected way of trying to say hello, and I'm pretty sure the last time I saw you I'd never surfed the Internet in my life much less tried to reconnect with old friends on it.  (If memory serves me, the last time we saw each other was in 1996, when I was living in Boston.)

I feel like I know so much about your life, but it's strange because I know it all from reading your wife's book.  I don't have any books for you to read about me, but I'll sum it up in a couple sentences: I'm still in Chicago, have been married for almost 10 years now, and I'm still a writer. I had a job writing human interest stories and grant proposals for an international humanitarian aid organization, but I lost it almost 2 years ago in the bad economy.  I was unemployed for a year, and used the time to travel, volunteer, and write.  Now I work doing administrative stuff, and it's not bad, if not my dream job.  I get to Plymouth, Vermont about once a year in late August, which I'm guessing is a busy season on the farm, but I'd love to stop by and say hello.

It's so good to know you're out there, doing your thing,

All my best,

   
JP (I included my phone number, which I won't do here, just in case the government or aliens are reading this)

And then.... nothing. I started to get irritated, I'd actually bothered to reach out across the years and make contact, and for whatever reason neither my boyfriend nor his wife deemed it necessary to respond.

Then, yesterday morning, as I was getting ready to walk out the door, the phone rang.  I looked at the caller ID, it said simply "New York call" from area code 518.  I don't know anyone with that area code, so I let it go to voicemail... and then I thought maybe I should check and see if there was a message.

I'm nerdy enough to copy and paste the note I left on The Dirty Life's wall, and I'm nerdy enough to have kept a copy of the text of the note that I sent my boyfriend, but there's something a little creepy about transcribing phone messages from old boyfriends word for word on my blog, so I'll paraphrase:

"J, I got a great letter from you, thank you so much.  It's been sitting on my desk for a month, and since I hadn't replied to it I figured I'd just call.  I can't wait to hear your voice and hear all your news."

I walked into the bedroom where my husband was still asleep.  He opened his eyes half an inch and I said "my boyfriend just called me!"

It was a trip; I haven't heard his voice since 1996, and he sounded exactly the same.  I went to work in a daze, and called back that evening.  I got his voicemail, and left a message that went something like this:

"Hi Mark, this is J calling you back.  You're probably asleep, or just not in your office.  Thanks so much for calling, I'm sorry I missed it.  It's so crazy to hear your voice on my voicemail, I'm pretty sure the last time I heard your voice or saw you was fifteen years ago.  I guess I'll try calling during the day, or - here's my cell phone number, I have my cell phone with me most of the time.  Hope to talk to you soon, and I hope everything is going well out there."

Last night, as I left work and walked to the bus stop to catch the #92 to the Hopleaf, I noticed I had a message from area code 518 from a couple minutes earlier.  It was Mark again.  I called back, and he picked up the phone.

"Mark?"  I said.
"Yes?"
"This is J,"
"Get out of town!"

We spoke for the entire bus ride, and continued our conversation as I stood outside the Hopleaf waiting for my husband.  And that, dear readers, is how I came to have a conversation with my high school boyfriend, who I haven't spoken to in 15 years, minutes before reading a story about him to a live audience.  (I didn't tell him that last part).

No wonder I can't sleep.

Insomnia

at Massmouth last month in Boston, where I was judged harshly for going off topic. Photo by Paula H.S. Junn. 
I've kind of been burning the candle at both ends, if working in a gym and making appearances at local storytelling venues can be considered burning the candle at both ends.  I'm a featured reader this Thursday at Story Club, and I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about what to read.  Meanwhile, I've been ignoring this blog.  I thought I'd stop in and say "hi", and post this goofy picture of me telling my UTI story to a Boston audience.  While the judges at Massmouth gave me a bad score, the audience responded really well.  At the intermission - when all the women lined up for the ladies room, I got more than one "you were robbed, I don't know why the judges did what they did!"  Which was hilarious, considering it was coming from women who were waiting in line to pee  Even from my seat on the stage (it was standing room only, and people were encouraged to sit onstage if there weren't any actual seats left), I got a couple of mouthed "you were great!"s from women sitting in the front row right after my bad score was unceremoniously written in black marker on a sheet of paper on the back wall.  Hooray for the ladies at Massmouth!  Boo for the judges!  Ha!


Okay, more soon I promise, hope you all slept well.