Apathy Unleashed!
DECEMBER 9, 2009
Would it surprise anyone to know that I’ve been depressed lately? Although I can usually do a passable job of shaking the holiday blues, being flat broke with a broken arm makes it more challenging. I just want to sleep.
Unfortunately, sleeping is nearly impossible, which is part of the problem. I can’t lie down comfortably, and when I manage to nod out while sitting up, it’s only ever for an hour or two. I wake up feeling jet lagged, as if I’d somehow managed to sleep in the middle seat on a non-stop economy flight from NewYork to New Guinea. Or a one-way bus to Pittsburgh. Everything aches, not just my broken arm, although my arm aches the most. I’m perpetually groggy, and not from any pain meds, either. I’ve tried a variety, but they all trigger nauseating vertigo. “Isn’t that better than the pain?” a nurse asked. No, frankly, it isn’t. Because the vertigo hits after the velvet blanket wears off. If I take a pill before bed, I wake up the next morning unable to turn my head without my brain sloshing like a compass that has lost magnetic north. I have to remain perfectly still or I’ll slide off the face of the earth and tumble inside out through the back of my skull. Instead, I choose tossing and turning — if you can call it that — all night long in a makeshift chair of pillows, sleeping in fits and spurts.
The easiest way for me to fall asleep is by wearing the brace I was given in the ER. It’s an elastic girdle that stretches around my mid-section with two velcro straps, one that fits around my bicep to stabilize my upper arm, and another that cuffs my wrist to my stomach. But I can only sleep that way for a couple of hours before waking up in a sweaty fit of exasperation, tearing the brace apart with the unmistakable roar of velcro. Deborah suffers from insomnia as part of her routine, and it’s not unusual for me to wake her up by simply rolling over or snoring gently. And once she’s up, she’s up. But now, my near-constant repositioning, along with the accompanying sighs of desperation, is so insistent in rocking her delicate perch that she can’t do anything other than grab a couple of pillows and a spare blanket and try to read herself to sleep on the couch. Generally, she’s unsuccessful.
Needless to say, we’re both cranky. But that didn’t stop us from trying to wade into the holiday spirit by buying a $4.99 fake white Christmas tree, a string of pink lights, and a handful of cheap decorations at the 99-cent store.
I didn’t want a tree. Trees are for kids, or families at least, but when Deborah told me that she’s never had a Christmas tree of her own in her entire adult life — not since leaving home at seventeen — I couldn’t believe it. “Okay, let’s do it.”
While out running errands, we looked over a small selection of trees for sale on the sidewalk, decent ones for about 20 bucks, and told the salesman we’d be back. “I’ll be here,” he said. But later, when we passed a 99-cent store selling four-foot-tall white ones, Deborah changed her mind. “What do you think?” she said.
“Totally up to you,” I said in my usual non-committal style. “Whatever makes you happy.”
When we got the tree home, she was disappointed at first. “Is this the same one we saw on display? It seems so much chintzier.”
“Four ninety nine,” I reminded her.
The tree came out of the box incomplete, missing part of its base, and we had to tape it to the windowsill for it to stay up. Hopefully it’ll hold till Christmas.
We listened to holiday music on the radio as we trimmed the scraggly thing with glittery gold balls and silver tinsel. By the time we plugged in the pink lights, it looked like it had been decorated by a couple of eleven-year-old girls.
“I love it!” said Deborah.
“Oh good,” I said.
“Do you like it?”
“You know what? I think I do.”
