There's still sleeplessness, except now it's different. Before, it was stress and worry induced insomnia. Now? I want to sleep. I need to sleep. I can fall asleep. Except...

...except there is that while before I fall asleep--which can be anywhere from 10 minutes to 30 minutes (at least, at last count)--where it's quiet and dark and there's no distraction from my thoughts and even though I know they can't keep me awake for long, like the thoughts of before, they're so much more harder to think through that I don't want to. As much I know that eventually I'll drift off, that I'll actually drift off, the awful silent heaviness of those thoughts is too much. So, I stay awake as late (or is it as early) as I possibly can so I can get tired to the point of passing out in a moment's notice, almost narcoleptic style, and spare myself that waiting period.

I can't concentrate enough to keep my wakeful vigil going as long as I need to, so I end up watching movies and TV shows on my laptop while everyone else is actually getting on with business of sleeping at the proper time. I've been mostly watching some old short-lived favorites from beginning to end on Hulu--Murder One, My So Called Life--, random episodes the USA channel's' 'buddy' series:In Plain Sight, White Collar, Burn Notice, and then a couple of new shows.

***

I think it was last Saturday night--or maybe it was very early Sunday morning--when I had my first honest to goodness chuckle for the first time since it happened. The first one that wasn't because of something the kid did or said--admittedly, deliberate and forced the first couple of days but then more naturally, the following--and the first one that I didn't feel guilty about later. I remember I'd realized that it was coming up on a week, and it seemed so soon, too soon, to be able to note that passing of time in a measurable definition--it made it just so very final, to be able to now start referencing it in that manner versus minutes and hours and single days. I could feel the tell-tale tightening of my throat and stinging in my eyes and I really didn't want to cry again, because I was afraid this would be the time I wouldn't or couldn't stop when I had to. All along, I'm trying so hard to watch what's playing out on my screen and then...

Excerpt from Skins Series 2 Finale (including Girls Aloud's Sounds Of The Underground and Britney Spears' Oops!...I Did It Again)



I don't know that anyone but L. and maybe one or two other people, if that, get it, but that was the absolute right thing for me to see, then.

I may have even chuckled a second time.