Hello lovely subscribers,
I won’t bore you with details - but as you can see, I have moved to Substack. So many people I respect and love to read are here.
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Thank you so much for reading, as ever.
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FEBRUARY 2024
Pillow sprays, hot baths, cold bedrooms, the odd Night Nurse, melatonin gummies from America. Stephen Fry gently guiding you through the audioscape of Provencal lavender fields. No phones or screens. Herbal teas by the variety boxful. Audiobooks you have heard before. Podcasts hosted by melodious Irish men. Imagining making a (vegetarian) Caesar salad in laborious tiny steps. Magnesium salts dissolved by the kilo. Five brands of earplugs, a thick sleeping mask, expensive patches. Getting up, changing rooms, flipping the pillow to the cool side. Deep breaths, yoga nidra, progressive muscle relaxation. Meditation techniques used by the army. Counting backwards from ten thousand.
And yet, after all of that. Still. There is that listless, empty, nausea-inducing awakeness, staring at the ceiling during the loneliest hours on the clock. Endless turning over. Fumbling for the highlighter-yellow earplugs that have disappeared somewhere beneath swathes of duvet. Eventually melting into some kind of subconsciousness, only to wake an hour later, dropping off a high cliff of a nightmare, being soothed by him that it wasn’t, it isn’t, real.
The next morning there is that raw, hot feeling behind my eyes. Not sleeping has left me feeling broken. It is still nearly dark, and the red and white quarry tiles in the little back porch way are slippery with rain. I need the air to tingle my skin into some vague suggestion of alertness. I drag myself on a run. The dog takes severe persuading to come, the small hills feel like mountains, and I don’t see another soul in the dark blue of the morning.
I return and shower, still sweating gently in the moist air after I get dressed. He greets me with a lilting ‘mor-ning’ that is instantly grating. I ask him why he had to get up at five am for the toilet, waking me as I finally dropped off again.
‘Because I needed to go.’ Entirely reasonable.
‘Well. I wish you could have waited.’ My entirely unreasonable reply.
Just as I am leaving, scrambling around for some semblance of lunch (a rushed tupperware of leftovers, packet of oatcakes, two clementines ‘with leaf’ and two happy hippos) - I notice what he is doing. In his hands is a handmade pot, in a patterned glaze, that I broke into dozens of pieces by accident last week.
Piece by jagged piece he is fitting the shards back together. Patiently, outside the back door, with the cigarette between his lips held in his mouth in complete concentration.
I am reminded of when he mended the curtain rail in my bedroom which had been lurching dangerously off the wall since I moved in. Rebuilt the rotting shed doors, complete with tiny handcarved stars as handles. Bought a long drain brush to unblock the tangle of (my) hair in the bathroom sink.
You and I both, reader, wish we weren’t leaning quite so far into heteronormative gender roles right now, but we are where we are. The truth is, though I have a toolbox, as literally anyone who knows me will vouch, I'm truly terrible at most practical things. Perhaps more importantly, I hate even the thought of attempting them. Especially when running on empty.
Standing in the back porch, I realise that I have not conveyed the quiet sense of gratefulness I feel for his mendings. When he fixes things, unblocks them, builds them and sands them. Being with someone eager to help me, in these small but tangible ways, is new. Like the first cold sip of a drink left overnight in the car. Unexpected. But very refreshing.
And that he still wants to mend - both the broken things and me - to soothe me when a night terror threatens to steal another night of sleep - when he is patient with me as I am far from the best version of myself.
That's newer still.
‘In times of crisis, we must all decide again and again, who we love.’ - Frank O’Hara
Good Things to click on
I have borrowed my mum’s copy of Bee Wilson’s cookbook. It is full of genuinely useful advice, and simple recipes that just taste very good.
Deciding on bedroom wallpaper. Nest egg or Claudia’s Friend?
If you’re interested in a more scientific (and less emotional, let’s face it) take on sleep, you can download a brilliant guide here
Tiny spritzes of joy (bought for me by Carys)
Fellow recovered insomniac here. The lonely hours are nauseating! It's a quiet crisis, you spend so many hours observing the stillness of the world that you almost kid yourself into thinking that you're not experiencing something hellish. How important family and friends are to keeping you afloat. I found talking to a therapist about sleep the most helpful, unpicking the bones of what had become sleep anxiety. It was sort of miraculous really, the brain makes so many subconscious associations. Clever thing.
Thanks for your lovely words, I'm sure you will regain your restful nights soon.
You are such an amazing writer