27. A nap in my living room sofa.

I fell asleep after lunch, when I came home from work, in the living room sofa, next to my cat and covered up to the head with the very fuzzy gray throw blanket.

I rested.

I took long deep breaths and I could feel the tiredness leaving my body, shedding away the morning, taking my worries away and leaving me, just me, in my most Loretta self, laying down with my cat on my belly and my head in the flowery cushions.

I've always had trouble with my sleep.

I sleep too much or I sleep too little.

I sleep too late or I pass out during the day.

I think I fucked it over when I started dating a boy from another town and we would talk on the phone for hours until our parents caught us when I was 15.

Maybe it was before and that's the story I keep telling myself.

Maybe it got bad when my mom relapsed and began smoking crystal meth again, 6 years after her last rehab when my father died. Or when her abusive boyfriend stayed over and I would lock my room up and jam the door with a chair from the inside, because I may have been choked and traumatized, but I was sure as hell not letting that man touch me.

Actually my sleep started being fucked up when my dad was sick, and he had to take 10 different pills during the night and it was just the two of us and I made sure he took them all. I made tiny charts with all my colored markers and pasted the timetables with the right medicines at the right times by his nightstand and made sure he took them all, 2:30 am, 4:15, 5:20, I was up and around and fixing everything for the man who couldn't stand, whose skin had swelled up to the point of tearing, the tiny man who on his last day on earth took my hands and asked me to pray with him, for the first time in my life, my father prayed. 

I've had a weird sleeping cycle for about 17 years now. And it takes a while for me to feel rested. I struggle. I read at night, when I can't sleep. I have sex, I write, I paint, I clean.

I lay down and I look at the ceiling and I cry.

Sometimes, I'm about to sleep, to finally fall, and I remember. I remember some fucked up shit my mind had been repressing for good fucking reason and it just comes back and breaks me. It just messes me up again. 

Then sometimes, when I'm able to sleep, I have nightmares, night frights and shakes. So that's another part that I don't like and that has also helped continue the fucking up of the sleep cycle.

But sometimes, like today, I take a nap. And it's cold weather brushing against my skin, my cat purring in my lap, the fuzziest of blankets and the peace of knowing I'm safe here, in my home that I've made for myself, with my partner, in this city on the brink of collapse that just sets my mind in the idea that nothing is forever, that I have a nice sleep, and I rest and I become truly myself. Shed away from everything that holds me back. 

I like those naps.