sleepless nights, unfamiliar homes and grief

I've been waking up in the middle of the night and staying awake for hours. I've also been shutting down and vegging out in front of the TV for hours every night. This is not normal.

Obviously the only constant is change, and for me the only constant for the past five months has been dislocation. I've been traveling, mostly for work, and during any stretches I've been home, my live-in-marital-life-partner (aka husband) has been posted in the jungle. I think I'm so adjusted to strange beds and loneliness that being home with him feels surreal, even jarring.

This fall presents a lot of opportunities to stay close to home, including lots of writing and plenty o' shows here in NYC. Still, I know that, given my career and my husband's, I should always be accustomed to travel and to being alone.

As we move through life, we lose some things in ways that hit us hard and knock us down. Loved ones die, we get laid off, we move across the country. In those moments, we expect the concomitant feelings of loss and sudden change, and (hopefully) we give ourselves room to grieve and cope.

All the while, as we go along living and accomplishing things, other changes happen in the background; we don't notice them explicitly, but they alter our lives. I finally got a wave of emotions at about 5am this morning that seemed to tell me what's been waking me up in the middle of the night, and what I found as I peeled back the layers was a giant helping of grief. I miss bygone friendships. I miss the phases of my college life and my post-college twenties. I miss my salary and my really good health insurance, even as I celebrate my fun free-wheelin' career.

So I have to take some time to mourn as I adjust to all that's new. I'm not quite sure how to go about that, as is probably obvious from this redundant and fumbling post. But at least I see the grief now. At least I know what's pressing on my heart.