Air Pocket

CWs: weird dreams (animal death, gore), food, mental health

I find nights and weekends to be “air pockets,” shelters from the storms of everyday life. I remember pretty vividly the first time I learned of the concept of an “air pocket.” In the early levels of the NES game Tiny Toon Adventures, there were some watery parts of the levels, and some sections were “air pockets” where you could find items or hide briefly from enemies in the water below. I’ve said this a lot, and it will continue to be a perennial phrase I drag out: “it was a long week.” My colleague in grad school said “you say that every week.” But it’s true. Every week is a long week. The weirdness of the world at large, and a stressful and intellectually and emotionally demanding job, coalesce into weird, long weeks. And it’s OK. It is all worth it. I love it, despite the stress and weirdness. But at the same time, then I safeguard and consecrate my free time away from at least the work side of things.

My spouse and I typically have dinner, watch some sort of TV together, hang out for a bit, and then go off to do our own things. Often I’ll get on the laptop and play games or surf the internet, or watch TV (I’ve been enjoying the ’60s Gumby series lately). My spouse usually will watch TV or something on their own; lately they’ve been watching The West Wing, a show I’ve heard is good, but I am not interested at least at this point. And then I’ll feed the girls at 9pm. If it’s a weeknight, I’ll usually then make a cup of tea (and often iced tea for the next day, if it’s low or lacking), and read for 1-1.5hrs. Usually around 10:30, I’ll listen to a podcast for about an hour until I go to bed at 11:30pm. I’m OK with that generally being our routine on weeknights. It gives us a chance to spend time together, then wind down doing our own things, and I get some reading in and audio too. If it’s a weekend, I usually do a lot of the same sort of thing, but we’ll usually hang out a bit more, and I’ll stay up later.

I treasure sleep. I use a CPAP, which took some getting used to, for sure, but even that doesn’t diminish my love for sleep. I try to clear my head and leave stress behind, as it will be there in the morning and can be dealt with then. It doesn’t always work, but I try to push away all the dark thoughts and embrace oblivion and rest. Now, that doesn’t keep weird nightmares from generating during that sleep. I remember a couple of nights ago I had a weird nightmare. I can’t remember much of it, but part of it took place in a weird house party of some kind. Lots of dudes dancing to weird music. Dimly lit. There were mutilated chickens strewn randomly about the house on the floors. I looked in the massive fridge in the kitchen and it was full of empty egg cartons. At some point I tried to leave the house and go home, but I ended up phasing into some sort of rollercoaster ride that I wasn’t ready to go on. From there I woke up. That dream stuck with me, though, clearly, if I’m writing about it a couple of days later. The egg cartons thing was very weird. It was like the fridge had been entirely full of eggs, and someone had eaten (or destroyed) all of them. The mutilated chickens were also very ominous.

Aside from weird dreams, sleep is lovely. I can’t remember long stretches, at least, of insomnia, but there were times when I couldn’t sleep quite as well. You’d think with everything going on in the world that I’d sleep worse, but really, I have to draw a line somewhere. Life is scary and weird and confusing but I can’t let that take my sleep away. I need my rest so I can do my best to fight for the good in the world. I can’t do that without resting enough. I should read Tricia Hersey’s books all about how “rest is resistance.”

So yeah, nights and weekends are the “air pockets” amid all the chaos, and they are to be treasured. I think I appreciate weekends more than ever these days. When I was a grad student, sure, we had weekends “off,” but they were full of studying and researching and writing, so it wasn’t really “time off” necessarily. And as a student, we had a lot more breaks and vacations &c. Now, working 40hrs/week, I really appreciate the downtime much more than I ever did. Not that you can’t appreciate it if you’re not working, but I just find I have a different perspective on it. By the time I get to Friday, I’m tired and wanting to relax a bit, and Friday nights are usually very calm. We usually end up doing something on Saturdays, and errands, and Sundays are often errands too, but usually fairly calm. And that’s life, and I’m OK with it. What are your “air pockets”? How do you recharge? I’d be interested to know. I would like to find ways to calm and de-stress more effectively.

I need to find a therapist and need to set aside some time for that particular search, but it’s hard to find someone who takes my insurance. But I do need to talk to someone and think it would be helpful, especially for coping methods. My spouse is there for me as much as they can be, but it would be helpful to be able to talk to someone else as well. It’s a work-in-progress, just like everything else in life, and that’s OK. I am OK living in the comparative degree, always working on getting better, since the “perfect” is unattainable. Perfection is death, it is stasis, it is an admission that no further growth is possible. I am fine striving for the perfect, but that’s a constant process. I feel like, at almost 41, I am just now figuring things out, and it’s a shame that it takes this long to sort things out. But better late than never, and I’m enjoying growing older and creakier.

Thanks for reading, friends, and take care of yourself and yours, and love each other as much as you can. <3