I Don’t Have to Get Up

Dearest Rachel –

Light seeps into the bedroom; cool, grey and cloudy, but light nonetheless. I can hear the chirp of various birds from the backyard, even as the occasional motorcar roars by outside in front of the house. It’s been an exhausting couple of days, but it seems as if we’re needing to get back to normal; more specifically, that I ought to be dragging myself out of bed and preparing to head to the ‘office’ (I suppose I could hit the gym first, too, but this is a line too far just yet – for the moment, the fact that I’m not eating like I’m on the cruise ship, with three rich meals a day, has been sufficient to slowly bring my weight back down from a peak of over two-forty). I reach for my phone to check the time:

It’s barely a quarter after five.

Yes, of course. It’s just passed the summer solstice, and the days are as long as they ever get. And it’s not as if I haven’t just come from places where the sun puts in all kinds of overtime already. This shouldn’t take me by surprise. But without the benefit of blackout curtains, there’s no hiding from light that quietly but insistently demands to be answered to.

The thing is, today, I’m not required to be anywhere, at any time. Oh sure, I’d like to report to the ‘office’ at a decent hour, but that “decent hour” is some four from now; that’s half a working day away. Not only that, but I can delay it for an additional hour, and it wouldn’t matter in the slightest to anyone but myself. Meanwhile, my mind marvels at the fact that I could go back to sleep – but refuses to – instead taking in the relatively still surroundings in mind wonder, asking itself what it’s doing spinning so frantically so early in the day, and writing down, not its conclusions, but its observations to that effect. Got to take advantage of the moment somehow.

It’s the sort of moment which, were you still around and everything was still functioning under that paradigm of normalcy, I’d take advantage of in a somewhat more literal sense – although I’d probably have to bear in mind that you would have been up until only a couple of hours ago yourself. I might lean over and give you a tentative peck on the cheek or forehead (whichever one presented itself as the more inviting target) to see how you’d react; you’d claimed several times to have fantasized about being ravished in your sleep like Snow White or Sleeping Beauty, but our actual attempts weren’t quite as satisfying as all that for either of us. If nothing else, a somnolent version of you doesn’t react properly; I’d prefer that you be able to enjoy and react to what was happening. Odds are, I’d need to let you sleep a few more minutes or hours before proceeding in earnest.

And honestly, I should probably be trying to get back to sleep at this hour myself, even if you were here, for those very stated reasons. It’s too early to be bothering with doing anything, and anything I’d want to do with someone else would have to wait until that someone else was ready to face the day. There’s no reason to be awake, apart from the slowly growing light outside, creeping into the bedroom from all directions except the one I’m facing (although my periphery is being assaulted gently from both sides, so it’s not as if this direction I’m facing makes any real difference).

But it’s that light that keeps me from being able to take advantage of the fact that I don’t have to get up; that, and the fact that my mind has already decided to start working on one or another of any little thing. The day has begun, whether I’m ready or not, and it would seem that my mind has reached the acceptance stage before the rest of me.

At least that remaining part of me manages to rein in my brain with writing and reading; between telling you about this situation and going through my news feed (which I’ve disregarded for the last day or so for obvious reasons – whatever’s going on in the rest of the world becomes pretty insignificant when you put it up against things like mortality and personal loss), I’ve been able to keep my mind from insisting that I hit the ground running when it knows as well as the rest of me that I don’t have to.

In fact, these distractions are so effective that I wander into the kitchen with barely an hour to spare before I should really be out the door and over to the ‘office.’ Three hours have evaporated before my eyes without much effort at all.

I’ve no idea when he plans to get up; like me, he has no need to do so, but unlike me, he has no self-imposed schedule that compels him to leave the house to do a certain amount of actual ‘work.’ Let’s face it; an entry-level job wouldn’t pay him as well as his portfolio does, and it just reinvests itself, so what’s the point in forcing him out? As long as he isn’t bored – and does it count when he’s unconscious? – there’s probably no harm being done. Still, it’s kind of weird not to be able to chat with him between waking up and heading out, despite the fact that there are four-plus hours between those two moments. Another reason to travel with him, now and again.

For now, though, I have to head out that door, myself. Well, not have to, as such, but you know what I mean. I need to keep myself busy, and being across town is how I can get myself to do so. For now, just keep your eye on me – and the other on him – and wish us both luck. We’re going to need it.