Love me, love me not

Another restless night. By now, I have lost the count as to how many days have passed since this persistent ailment started. At 3:54 am I gave up fighting with the 3 blankets and gained a 6-minute start for the day. After nearly 20 months of working, I continue to improve my morning efficiency by cutting or simplifying all routines. From dressing to heading out, it takes as little as 15 minutes. I think I even beat that record today. Better yet, I beat my morning pal by a hair of room. He was right behind me when I walked through the chilly dawn to the office. Today, I got to turn on the lights. I never realized my competitiveness, or the extent of it, until I met him. He has in fact been pushing up his morning hour because of me and I found it annoying. As painful as it has been, my insomnia actually paid off and brought me some sweet consolation in this ridiculous win. I felt brave, triumphant and proud.

By the time coffee was made and emailed opened, it was barely 4:45 am. Another long day was officially unrolled. After over a month of sleep deprivation, my body seems to adjust well. It is always faithful, ready for work despite of my heavy eye lids and mild headache. For someone with high energy and spirit such as me, it is not hard to imagine. What amazes me is that I actually don’t seem to mind. Though a scrooge still, I may have accepted my fate here, work and insomnia included. I have always found comfort in routines all my life -- just never thought that would include a 4am wake up call, 10-hour work day, and yes, no sleep night.

End of January concluded my 20-month of working after 20 year of child rearing. A dear friend of mine recently commented how happy she was for me and that my making it means there is hope for “late” boomers such as me. I am not nearly as encouraged as she is as I know well how much struggle it has been and still is for me to have jumped back into this deep end and tried to float atop after 2 decades of absence. I face not only the professional, technical challenges but also the interpersonal, social skills, the later to me proven much more complex than the former. It may have something to do with a changed world for which I was not prepared, having been confined and consumed by another world of totally different dynamic. Yet, the further truth is that the deficiency or struggle within this department has always been there.

In my growing years, I was always quoted by family as difficult even for ghosts’ company. I remember having frequent emotional outbursts as a very young child when agitated. After moving up to school age, I gained some control with my firing fits only to be confronted with another mission impossible: the forever quest for approval from both adults and peers. My emotional well-being or balance was constantly hanging by a thread. Any perception of rejection would result in a mass of explosion. Gone was that little dark shadow at the corner, there emerged from nowhere the green Hauk frantic in her wounds that no one could tame. My beautiful older sister was then my sweetest dream and also most hated rival. I longed to be her: straight A’s, popular and adorable. The mystery remained forever why and how she could be that well controlled in the realm of the same world we were both in. There was this confidence and capacity in her to take on anyone or any task with very little effort, while I looked on with astonishment and could not even begin to imitate. Patience, perseverance and maybe even detachment were what I perceived her biggest assets. I hardly ever saw her losing balance for anything or anyone, not that they ever became anything disadvantageous to her. The loved her as much as she loved them.

But how I did too love and long to be loved… except that desire and acts seemed to have included something else. It was the deepest personal abandonment, followed by a price tag of my whole world and my sense. For someone with so much at stake and at the same time such extreme passions, interpersonal relationship was a dangerous, if not impossible, task. Years of head-on combats later, the little frustrated girl eventually calloused up and became an old soul. She learned to clam shot most of the time for self preservation sake. For the longest time, even after that night when God and I had our first chancing, I have continued to struggle to make peace between the one He loves and the one I do not, and more importantly, between His approval and man’s. Twenty months are nothing comparing to twenty years of dormant, but I started sensing the danger in the dilemma: sense or sensibility, love-me or love-me-not? Can I, decades later, dive into this battle all over again – only this time with clearer perspective on Him whose love I should really care? As self absorbing as man is, can anyone really love, himself included, without regret or fear?

The time ticks 5:30am when my colleagues will soon be showing up. I have hoped that I never have to play the daisy game, as older and wiser I thought I have become, but the anxiety is submerging up slowly. This time around, the question on the surface seems to be more of love you, or love you not, but maybe, as it has always been, is it still: love me or love me not?