Régime Note:
Aubade
14 February 2019
¶ Never have I been so impatient, not for the warmer weather that Spring brings, but for the light.
Often, I wake up between six and seven, waiting for brightness between the slats of the Venetian blinds. The day begins when I can read without a lamp — whether or not I get up then. And it ends when the light dies. The difficulty is that I don’t know what to do with the evenings, now that I don’t drink. (Trying not to be aware of evenings as such is a help.) By the time night falls, I have done enough reading for the day; I can’t really think anymore. That was always the excuse for pouring a glass of wine at about seven — and keeping the glass filled. I don’t miss the wine, but I do miss the tidal change, the official time off.
A great part of me simply wants to go to bed when it gets dark. But Kathleen comes home, and we have some sort of dinner. (My repertoire is even more limited than it already was by the need to keep off my feet.) And as midnight approaches, I feel the old anxiety about getting to sleep, even though for weeks now I have had no trouble at all dropping off within half an hour of taking a pill. With the drink, it used to be chancy — the drink, which had once made falling asleep (passing out) easy, took to scrambling my brain so badly that no pill could calm it down. I worry that remembering those awful hours will keep me awake, but it doesn’t.
Morse and Lewis have been a great help, filling up the time between dinner and bedtime. But I wish I could feel something like this new happiness of morning at the other end of the day.