This morning is not being good to me at all. If I thought yesterday was an emotionally rough day, I think today – no, I know today – is going to end up being even worse…
First, there is the fact that I got less than two hours of sleep. For some reason, the kids and I have been on high-alert about everything. Every little noise, any slight bit of movement, literally everything. We’re all sketching pretty hard, about what or why, I’m not 100% sure. Yes, we did have a break-in and yes, we’re all still feeling some of the affects of that, but sketching this hard… So, it took awhile for the kids to fall asleep because they were up and down over every thump from the neighbors or because The Boyfriend and I would get too quiet downstairs.
Once they were asleep though, I thought I’d fall asleep with ease. As The Boyfriend and I tucked ourselves into bed, I see lights flashing like crazy out the front window. So, I go over and look and there’s a cop car just down the street a little ways, just sitting there with his lights on. Don’t ask me why, but this made me incredibly nervous. Then, the cop starts acting real sketchy like – and not actually the cop, but the car he was driving. First, he’s stopped at one stop sign, then he does a U-turn and stops at the other stop sign, then he drives around the intersection and stops at another stop sign, each time sitting there for a good 5 or 10 minutes, lights blaring through the front window.
So, I spent a good long while nervous and frantically checking in on the sketchy cop and his lights. After the cop finally leaves and relief washes over me, the heater starts sounding differently. This is pretty common for me. It takes me awhile to get used to the heater at night, because it just sounds so much louder and more daunting when the house is quiet. During the day, we don’t notice it because there is just so much noise around here, but at night, there is nothing to drown the thing out. I tossed and turned forever freaking out about the heater.
Finally, my eyes won’t stay open any longer. I can’t fight sleep and my whole body can feel it. My ankle starts to hurt really bad and it takes me forever to get comfortable, especially being that I’m too worried to roll away from the door, so I stay uncomfortably facing it. The Boyfriend can feel me tossing and turning, even though he’s been sleeping for a couple hours. He rolls over and snuggles in close behind me. Again, I feel relief – for a moment.
Now that the weather is getting warmer, he sweats in his sleep, profusely. I’ve never witnessed anything like the sweat that pours from him during his sleep. And he doesn’t even notice. But as he cuddles into me, all I can feel is wet and cold and hot all at the same time and it’s not a good environment for sleep. How he sleeps is beyond me, because I don’t think I could if I were the one sweating like that. He says that the only thing he notices is that he gets really really cold when the blanket is taken off…
His alarm goes off, 6 AM, and I’m just starting to fall asleep. He gets up and I steal his pillow and make myself quite comfortable. As he’s waiting for his cab, I’m content and drift off. He leaves and I lock the door behind him and then fall right back to sleep with ease. Before I can even get to the point of a blissful deep sleep, a creepy and very light rat-a-tat-tat happens at my door. I ignore it, since I recognize the knock as my brother’s. But, it happens again and then a push on the locked door and then it happens again and again.
I was content to continue to ignore it until I deemed it an appropriate hour for him to be here. The kids, however, did not feel the same way. All three of the older kids come rushing down the stairs, “Someone’s at our door! Mommy, there’s someone at our door!“. I whisper to them that it’s just Uncle Goober and we’re just going to ignore him. As he pushes on the door again, all the kids jump and Kaeidyn begins crying, “Mommy, please just answer the door!”, scared out of her skull.
I go over to the door and yell through it, “You can’t be here right now, it’s too early. You’re scaring the kids and you need to go back to your house to sleep” and he starts yelling back at me – something my brother almost never does. I tell him he needs to leave my doorstep or I’m going to have to call the cops on him, so he leaves and we’re all prepared to go back to sleep. The kids all crawl into bed with me, we get ourselves all tucked in and comfy, when his voice is now at my front door mumbling away to himself. I go over to the door and open it and before he can even get a word in, tell him he needs to leave and he needs to leave now! Then, he starts yelling at me again as he’s slowly backing away from a very grumpy-in-the-morning Val… He starts saying how where he’s living now isn’t working out either and can’t he just sleep where he feels safe and all this crap, that I find out later isn’t even true.
For some reason, he goes completely stiff and then falls down into the snow and says that he’s going to sleep there. Not in the mood, I say to him that I’m calling the cops and close and lock the door behind me. He goes back to his house. I call my Mom, in tears because of all this lack of sleep and all this stress first thing in the morning and I’m yelling at her about the whole situation. She’s trying to calm me down and I’m just getting more and more upset about it. She calls around to find out from the house what’s going on with him and then she calls his work to find out what’s going on there and my brother is just bat-shit crazy right now and it’s to the point where our only option is to call the cops on him…
And, it feels freaking terrible!
By this point, the thought of sleep is the furthest thing from anyone’s mind. We’re all pissed off, we’re all upset, we’re all worried, we’re all stressed out and we’re all completely helpless… I don’t know how to help him through this at all. I don’t even think Freud would’ve been able to help him through this! I’m strongly of the opinion that he needs to be institutionalized until they find a cocktail of drugs that will work for him, will help him sleep, will help him stay in control of his thoughts. Like my Mom says every single time I try to tell her he doesn’t need drugs, he has done actual brain damage and it’s not something talk therapy is going to help.
I want so badly to be his big supportive and protective sister. I want so badly to take him in my arms and make him feel all better. I can’t imagine how it feels for my Mom… I just want him to not be crazy like this.