Meditations of an extremely sleep-deprived girl

After several days of very little sleep, I’ve finished my final papers for this quarter, perhaps my final school papers ever. I should be excited, but I’m too tired for that. I was going to go do something to celebrate but I decided to come home and watch The Office instead.

I am really glad I have plans to see friends tomorrow. It’s been a quiet few days here. Erik is in San Jose, and Jason is in Idaho, so there’s no one here that I can just run over to and talk to whenever I feel like it. Normally I’m very comfortable being alone. Some days I even look forward to it. But just this week I’ve been really missing the companionship, and that’s an unfamiliar feeling. I’ll be making myself some dinner, and I’ll suddenly realize I don’t have anyone to eat with, and then I’ll feel sad. Or I’ll be petting the kitties, and I’ll find myself wishing they could talk (though they certainly try their best). It’s strange because most of the time, I’m glad to eat in silence with a book for company, and when I pet the kitties we have great conversations and I’m delighted to be with them. But for some reason, this week, all my normal solitary pursuits just aren’t enough. I wanted to call people and see if we could get together, but I didn’t think it would be fair to do so when I wasn’t sure I could speak coherently for longer than a minute at a time.

I wonder whether my loneliness has something to do with my writing. I’ve been doing a lot of creative work this week, writing and drawing all day and into the wee hours. I think it makes sense for me to crave conversation and companionship when I’m writing, because for me writing is all about communication. It’s isolating when I’m doing all this communicating to mute paper or a computer screen. It’s not necessarily that I need to talk to someone about it while I’m doing it, but apparently I do need to talk. But I have been talking — I drove my cousin Alex to Gardena yesterday, so we had a good talk for about two hours during lunch and the drive, and Shra and I had a good catch-up talk on the phone this morning — so it’s not just conversation alone. Maybe there’s something more I’m missing, something that has to do with the feeling of connectedness that comes best when one spends physical time with beloved friends and family. The sad thing is, in my solitude I have been seeking other “friends,” like The Office, Harry Potter audiobooks, and Madeleine L’Engle novels, and they actually do function as friends while I’m watching, listening, or reading. I guess it makes sense; the characters in all of these works are beloved and familiar, so even if they don’t exist in the real world, they do provide a bit of connectedness in my sleep-deprived lonely drift (and I don’t mind imposing my exhausted self on them).

If I ever do become a full-time writer, this loneliness is something I’ll have to take into consideration.

This entry seems to be moving toward the one I’ve been wanting to write for a long time, about community. I’m not sure now is the best time to write it, because I’m so tired, but I guess it’d be okay to get started.

Okay, I am really not fit to write on this right now. I just attempted to start on the topic and it was pathetic. I won’t expose you to it. I’m going to stop here and leave the subject for another time, because I know if I keep going I won’t be doing it justice.

Tonight’s order of business: plenty of sleep. I’m looking forward to feeling like myself again.

[This post was imported on 4/10/14 from my old blog at satsumabug.livejournal.com.]