Sing me a lullaby.

Sleep that knits up the ravell’d sleave of care,
The death of each day’s life, sore labour’s bath,
Balm of hurt minds, great nature’s second course,
Chief nourisher in life’s feast.
(Macbeth 2.2.36)

So I'd thought to be a good girl, skip the bedtime coffee (yes, I actually do have coffee before I go to bed some nights), skip an hour's worth of Dungeon Keeper 2, and go to bed earlier than my usual. Except what I did do was toss around for more than an hour. And in my frustration, started to remember how falling asleep has not been as easy as before.

Lying on my side, eyes closed, one arm flung across the other pillow, listening to Sarah McLachlan's soft cooings, but sleep easily eluded my blind grasps in its thickening darkness, as the minutes ticked on inexorably.

Began to miss having the bear to snuggle up to (as I have on so many other nights), even if it were just having him in the same room -- even if it were just holding on to the soft toy that had his scent (which I've since given back to him, along with everything else that resembled the polar bear). I thought about what I would say to him if he wanted to start dating again, even if I wasn't to be the only one. And I imagined my face buried in the distinctive scent of his cheek, and my hand being held in the warmth of his...again...

Also thought about what SF had asked me over Saturday lunch at Sketches. What if I'd agreed to the non-exclusive relationship that he had asked for? How different would things have turned out?

The faded first wife, who lies alone on the coldness of her bed, while her husband is amusing himself with the new flavour of the month. She would still be awake, even as the night finally slips away and it dawns on her that he would not be returning to her chamber afterall, not tonight, anyway.

As I played out the "what if" and "thereafter" in my head, I knew this was an unacceptable hypothetical situation that would never be part of my reality.

And then I thought about how that might not have been his indirect (or cowardly) way to say he wanted to dump me (nevermind what his subconsciousness or heart really wanted), which I thought it was, and thus had I decided then to perform the amputation myself before it turned gangrenous.

Afterall, he did say he was ready to break up with the 4-legged snake-woman (yeah well, a dragon just has 4 more appendages, and there are many other creative alternatives to the five-letter B-word), if I wanted to get back together. Had I been so blinded by the shock of his revelation that I had failed to see the opportunity before me to redeem our relationship, and had instead let go of us too quickly?

Started to wonder if I had made the "wrong" decision based on my "wrong" assumptions, if I had been too severe in my expectations and being unable to forgive. And then I cried a little, perhaps for loneliness, perhaps for the bitterness that he didn't have to deal with the loneliness, perhaps for a hasty choice made, perhaps for an inevitable choice made, perhaps for an inevitable but valuable lesson which I'm still learning, but for which I've had to pay a very high price for.

And then, I remembered that nothing changes the fact that he had cheated on me. And that he wasn't sorry about it.

Ah well, this Pavlov's dog will just have to re-learn the conditions for sleep to occur, eh?

- - - - - - - - - -

Was just joking with SF that while she's gone in Bangkok, I'll have withdrawal symptoms from having no access to the Happy Tree, and that I couldn't scratch my back on the office Happy Tree wannabe, which is not unlike a fake gold bar wrapped only with fancy gold foil. Heh.

Uncharacteristically enough, the fake Happy Tree was bitching the whole of today and just being negative about our problems at work -- an odd reversal of roles, since I'm usually the one bitching. Come to think about it, she's been going on more holidays of late, her self-proclaimed cure-all for the humdrum of life. But they don't seem to have helped lift her spirits, as they did before. I would look over at her ever so often, and her eyes would be the same opaque black discs on listless sheets of white. Her eyes no longer have that sparkle that they used to, as she came bounding into the office, the day after one of her holidays.

Am reminded of an earlier reflection on the nature of happiness, as well as a recent study that believed happy people were those who kept themselves occupied and surrounded by pleasantries.

Now then, what happens when the activities you relied upon to keep you happy begin to give you diminishing returns?