My need to be held

The past nights have been rough. No matter how well my day might have gone and how satisfied & tired I might feel when I go to bed, I keep waking up sometime between 2-3 in the morning and cannot fall back asleep for several hours. 

The rumination and the sadness and the anger are so intense, so painful, that none of the usual methods to get me back to sleep — guided meditations, relaxation techniques, lullabies — work. 

So when the sadness and anger get too intense, the need to be held too painful to bear lying awake in bed at 4 AM, I go downstairs and curl up in the corner of the couch with one or two of my favorite blankets. I curl up hugging myself into my blanket and sometimes also hug a cushion. 

The living-room isn’t as dark or quiet as my bedroom but somehow the white-noise from the air-filter and the soft, warm, dim light on the mantelpiece soothe me — maybe because they help me feel less lonely. 

I eventually fell asleep on the couch around 4 or 5 this morning, and dreamt of soft little wild animals, foxes and lynxes and wild cats, coming into my attic room through the slanted window… 

When I curl up like this on the couch on these difficult nights, my sleep is never super deep, but it is, somehow, quieter than in bed by myself. Maybe because there’s something about curling up on the couch, being held in the arms of this soft piece of furniture, that vaguely makes up for my desperate need to be held by loving human arms…