Insomnia

Last night was agony. 

Last night I fell asleep at 10:30pm while watching Tiny Furniture, only to wake an hour later and be faced with the task of trying to mitigate my hot flashes, nightmares, and maldigestion. I'm sure the culprit was the particle of garlic that landed on my dinner plate hours before, which always manages to poison me in spite of my (clearly unrequited) fondness for it. I suppose this mirrors the paradox of most things in life.  

I go off and on with insomnia. Thankfully, my friends on the other side of the world do too and so there's relative comfort found in the fact that there's always someone in another time zone willing to talk during those otherwise lonely hours of the night. 

Last night as I lay awake, I thought about how I'm going to be thirty this summer and how I have less self-earned money in my bank account than when I was 15, answering phones in a pizza shop:

"Thanks for calling, will this be pick up or delivery?" 

"oh you want double sausage on that?" 

"Right now we have a special on a one-topping large for $14.99 plus tax." 

Fifteen years have passed and while my current days may be somewhat more intellectually seasoned than the marinara sauce at Pazzo's Pizza, I'm not convinced this to be sufficient compensation for the fact that I now reckon myself a bottom-feeding insomniac with generalized anxiety, more wrinkles, and NO MONEY. When a friend (on the other side of the world) posted on facebook this morning that he was hiring hostesses for his new restaurant, I actually considered. When I lamented my frustration to my fiancé, he recommended I consider selling my engagement ring. I'm not sure what to do.

Which at 3am brought me to the thought of all the stuff I have to do, from minor things like shopping lists, to more onerous ones like getting an Italian driver's license. Some things have been stagnating on my to-do list for years because they somehow provoke the feeling of insurmountability within me. At least once a week I walk into my kitchen with socks and step into a puddle of water. Do you know how horrible a feeling this is? My fridge has a leak and has had a leak for over three years, but the task of calling a plumber feels so Sisyphean that I'm willing to endure the suffering met with having wet socks.

Thankfully at 4am my mind switched to some of the more enjoyable events that have occurred of late. My friend Milla came to visit. Milla is hands-down the most energetic person I have ever come across who doesn't abuse illegal stimulants. She has a predilection for wine and quality people, so we did our best to provide her with the wine.

she is also the best selfie-taker I have ever seen. 

Here is her "Serious" selfie:

... And her "Look how much fun I'm having" selfie:

Anyway, she left us and made her way back to 'merica just in time to squeeze in her medical school graduation, and I immediately went back to studying for my own exams. In spite of this, we managed a hike up to the hills overlooking Lake Como, reaping the reward of not only a brilliant view shared with friends, but a bottle of Prosecco for mimosas and two big bags of fresh brioche. The bubbly made the trip down exponentially more fun, and made peeing in the woods that much less an obstacle, not that we did that. 

Naturally, my alarm clock sounded about fifteen minutes after I'd finally fallen back asleep, the only consolation for which came from the fact that it signaled it was CEREAL AND MILK TIME!! A bowl of cereal and milk coupled with a literary piece of questionable caliber has stood the test of time as being one of the most decadent of life's pleasures. So in spite of the insomnia, the financial disillusionment, and the fact that I was gifted a herpes outbreak in my right nostril this week, I still woke up happy.