That Ain't Right

Suddenly my eyes were open and struggling to focus in the dark room. In the doorway, a figure, a series of lines fuzzy in the blackness start to form into a recognizable… but no, it’s just 2 am playing tricks on me again. I have been waking up at 2 am every night for months, maybe longer, time’s running together like one giant… ugh, I’m too tired to finish that analogy. Once, after I noticed the pattern, I Googled, “Why do I wake up at 2 am?!?!” All search results pointed to the same thing. Some “ancient wisdom” that says consistently waking up in the middle of the night is directly connected to a problem within. Apparently the 2 am hour relates to alcohol consumption, as in too much. Yeah right, like a glass or two of wine every night, or half a bottle, or a full bottle, or whatever, is a problem. But it just keeps happening, every night, eyes open, red numbers on the clock come into focus, 2 AM. And I begin to dwell on it. In fact it really starts to bug me. It’s not the only reason why I decided to stop drinking for a bit, I mean, there are other consequences of too much alcohol consumption, like weight gain. After all, it was alcohol that was the major contributing factor to the freshman 40 I put on my first year in college. And I know, I know, the phrase is freshman 15, but when you drink a lot of beer and sleep through most of your classes, well, let’s just say, gaining weight was the only thing I excelled at that year.

So yeah, I decided to quit the drinking for a bit, see if I could finally lose that weight, and maybe, finally sleep through the night. And I did shed all those pounds, three months after I stopped boozing it up I was back to my pre-college weight, but I was still waking up at 2 am, every single fucking night. So I did what any sane person would, and I installed a camera in my room. I figured there must be something waking me up, it was just too weird. I figured, perhaps, one of the cats, or the dog, or something like that? I don’t know. The morning after I installed it I was super excited to view the footage. Oh yes, I woke up at 2 am, as usual, but decided to go back to sleep and wait until a more normal morning hour to watch it. At 6 am I could wait no longer and popped the tape into my VCR. I leaned forward, anticipating one of my fuzzy little beasts to appear in the frame at any moment, but instead I saw the real culprit, my husband, my fucking husband. Every night he was setting his alarm for 2 am, waking up, and poking me until I stirred, then he pretended to be asleep. WHAT THE FUCK!?