I’ve been tagged by Fuzzypeach, so here goes …

When I was a kid, maybe 10 or 12, my family was on vacation and staying with friends who had a son of about my age. In a moment of weird ego, I boasted to him that once I fell asleep, nothing could wake me up. I don’t know why I made this boast … is it even something to be proud of? Not to mention the fact that it was entirely untrue. He called me on my bluff and said he would try to wake me up that very night. When he crept stealthily into my room, I was awake before he even made it to my bedside. He dutifully poked and prodded me, but I kept my eyes clamped shut, willing my breathing to stay deep and even. Apparently I convinced him, because he lifted my shirt and started ogling my nonexistent chest. If memory serves me, he even tugged on my pants for a bit but gave up before long. He didn’t inappropriately touch or molest me, he was just genuinely curious. But instead of slapping him silly for it, I just lay there, determined to maintain my idiotic ruse. By the light of day I started to feel differently, and told my mother what happened. Hoo boy, did that kid get in trouble! But I can’t help wondering how odd I must have appeared to all involved … wide awake, pretending to be asleep, even when some kid tries to look up my shirt?

When I was 16 I started having trouble staying awake in school. I tumbled from a straight-A student to a C-average. As the weeks passed, I grew more and more lethargic, and stopped caring about anything. I couldn’t sleep at night, couldn’t wake up in the morning. My mother – who revels in her “illnesses” and subscribes to a philosophy of better living through chemicals and surgery – dragged me off to a sleep doctor. After several nights of testing in his sleep lab, he diagnosed me with narcolepsy. Uh, I don’t know if you looked at that link, but I didn’t have any of the symptoms of narcolepsy. I didn’t fall asleep in mid-sentence, I didn’t have sudden loss of voluntary muscle tone, I didn’t suffer from vivid hallucinations or temporary paralysis. I was tired and listless, and although I’m not sure I shared this information with anyone, I felt bad and shameful. I “punished” myself by not wearing make-up to school and purposefully tried to make myself look ugly. I thought often of dying, just to escape the constant pain. It shouldn’t have taken a genius to figure out I was depressed. Whether by accident or design, my treatment for narcolepsy consisted of antidepressants (which supposedly regulate sleep cycles) and a stimulant in the morning. Although the antidepressants helped, and I used them off and on into my 20s, what I really needed was a loving family. It has been over 10 years since I took an antidepressant, and – after a lot of work on my part – I’m happy to say I suffer from neither depression nor narcolepsy. In fact, there’s finally a damn good reason for how tired I feel. It’s called “my kid”.

I am a total spoilsport when it comes to games. I am hypercompetitive because I have an irrational fear of failure. I hate losing. Hate it. I attribute this to my upbringing and my constant quest for perfection in an effort to win my parents’ love. Of course, being perfect didn’t really help things. I didn’t feel unloved because I got a B in History. It was because my parents were fucked up. But that thought, and the subsequent implications (My parents? Fucked up? Aren’t they supposed to be perfect? How can they take care of me? Am I in danger?), were far too scary. It seemed much safer to lay the blame on myself. Besides, that was something I could control – I just had to work harder, study longer, be better. If I could just do that, then they would love me. I have spent most of my adult life trying to re-write this faulty programming, and let me tell you, it ain’t easy. I’ve come a long, long ways, but will never really reach a destination. We all have our flaws and issues, and this is one of mine. I will be working on it for the rest of my life, and I’m okay with that. But when I can have fun playing a game – when I can lose and not care – then I’ll know that I’ve made some serious progress.

Hmmm. Somehow this has devolved into an analysis of my childhood. Let’s see if I can think of something a little less … depressing.

I am not-so-secretly glad to be out of the (paid) workforce. Chalk it up to the aforementioned perfection and fear of failure, but I found engineering to be exhausting, despite my affinity for and enjoyment of the fundamental principles (how cool is it that you can describe physical phenomena with mathematical equations?). It’s 3:30 in the afternoon, and I’m still in my pajamas. Sometimes I don’t leave my house for days on end, venturing out only when I’m scraping the bottom of the fridge. Don’t get me wrong; there are days I’d love to boot my kid off to daycare and not have to worry about all the struggles with napping and pooping (when she’s supposed to be napping), and so forth. But the main thing I hate about my life right now is the lack of sleep, and that isn’t going to change, whether I’m at work or at home. In fact, being at home actually gives me the chance to nap when she does. Unless I take that time to update my blog.

Ever since I got pregnant, I’ve had the memory of a gnat (this is me, the perfectionist – remember?). I can’t even count how many times I’ve put eggs on to boil, only to return some unknown time later to find all the water gone and cracked and burnt eggs in the bottom of the pan. Who burns hard boiled eggs? I’ve had so many ideas for this post, but was never close enough to the computer or a piece of paper to get them down before they vanished into thin air. After wracking my brain and jotting down the above four, I decided to microwave my lunch while trying to think up a fifth idea. While standing in the kitchen I came up with one that was clever and funny. “Perfect!” I thought. What was it? I dunno …

So who’s next? I haven’t heard from you lately, New Mama. And I know some Holidaily Ladies who are looking for inspiration: Jeanette, Leigh, MB and Northwoods Baby. Think of it as a suggestion, not an obligation. And leave a link if you decide to play!