The one morning I wasn’t supposed to be needed

The question becomes, “what do I do?” 

Because right now I am angry.

Sitting, staring at my clock that says 6:46 am. 

I remember the conversation distinctly before bed last night. 

“Turning off alarms so that we can sleep in.” 

Because I NEED to sleep in. 

I feel like I haven’t slept in weeks. 

My body and my mind are tired and I need the rest. 

He even offered me half a trazedone. 

I normally don’t take anything for sleep, but this felt like the right thing because my body just wanted to power down and completely reset. 

He put on his headphones so that I didn’t have to hear the TV as I was falling asleep. 

He’s been doing that all week, which tells me he is thinking of me. 

And yet here I am, staring at my phone, awake from the alarm that he didn’t turn off, and contemplating waking him up so that I am not the only one suffering from an early alarm clock. 

Because he has the ability to turn it off, roll over, and go back to sleep. 

I… do not. 

That alarm has pulled me from some of the best sleep I have gotten in a while. It sent me straight into a rage that I can’t even put into words to describe. 

I know it is the sleep deprivation and unending activities of a busy fourth of July weekend and straight back into a long work week that have done me in, but the second or third interrupted rest by his hand this week makes me want to get a hotel room for the night. 

It makes me picture those 1950’s movies where the wife yells as she’s walking out the door, “i’m going to my mother’s!”. 

I wouldn’t be going because there is any struggle in our marriage, but purely for the fact that I need some fucking sleep. 

Without someone getting dressed in the same room that I am trying to nap in. 

Without someone watching TV while I’m overstimulated and trying to fall asleep. 

Without someone forgetting to turn off their alarm and waking me up in the middle of one of the best nights of sleep I’ve gotten in a while. 

I keep picturing myself in a cabin in the woods somewhere. 

Hold up with my laptop and an unending supply of hot lemon water, my cozy clothes, emotional support water bottle, and noise cancelling headphones. 

Everything tuned out except me and my thoughts.

Because maybe if I get them all out of my head and down on paper then I will be able to be present again. 

It’s one of the things that cancer gave me, presence. 

And I feel like ever since treatment ended and I have been given back to life that presence has slowly dwindled away into this desperate run toward work again. 

Don’t get me wrong, I absolutely love the work that I am doing and wouldn’t change it for the world. 

But there are moments where I miss just sitting at home with my family and not having a to-do list running through my head. 

I feel like I need someone to remind me every once in a while that I am in charge of my own schedule and I can set the laptop and to-do list down and just be for a little while. 

Maybe that's why the alarm hurt so much.

It wasn't ninety minutes of sleep.

It was the one morning I had promised myself I wouldn't have to be anything for anyone.

Not a coach.

Not a business owner.

Not a marketer.

Not a wife.

Not the woman who always remembers what everyone else needs.

Just someone sleeping.

And when the alarm went off, it felt like even that had been taken away.