I don’t know why I’m still awake. I only napped for half an hour and that was, now, 12 hours ago. My body doesn’t transition well between sleep and awake. I’m notorious for not being a morning person. The things I say before I’m awake could sustain their own comic blog. 

But here I am, at 1 am, too tired to sleep. 

Do you know how that feels? 

I’ve done my relaxing moves, my nightly prayer rituals and clean sleep habits. But the blue light of my cell phone is better company than the dark of my room and my snoring husband. I spend a lot of time looking at my iPhone with one eye closed because my vision blurs and spins in insomniac circles this late at night. Although 1am isn’t as late as I used to regularly hit before I got a psychiatrist and some delicious meds. 

I don’t know why I’m awake. Or maybe I do and I just can’t admit it. Can’t admit it like I struggle to actually admit how much I can’t get over my abuse no matter how much I try. And it’s moments like this that remind me that I can’t just think or repent or pray this pain away. I’ve had trouble sleeping since my earliest memories and my nightly terror is an ebenezers of sorts of the pain and injury I’m still recovering from. Because, I remind myself often, the pain I’m experiencing now hints at the value I had when it was inflicted. The value I still have as a woman, a human being, an adopted daughter of God, a mother of dragons (ok, toddler but he often acts like an untamable dragon). I am valuable and that’s  so unrelated to my performance [in my career, quiet times, family times, and meal times). My worthiness is so grounded in simply being human. In being made in the imGe of God. Why is that hard for me say in this age of social justice and cool jeans? I so insistently remind others they have this value (I often reject self-effacing apologicies) but I still struggle to apply it for myself in the social math I calculate. 

I am hungry and my valuable body deserves to be fed because it’s been 7 hours since I ate dinner. I should be sleeping but instead, I’m hoping someone else is awake and knows what this is like and can keep me company in the club I pray will finally stop approving members.

I hate the lonely night.