I must have tucked away a few experiences from Superman's deployments that only now are starting to resurface.
Insomnia.
Looking back I always think, how did I ever endure? I think, could I ever do it again?
(Deployment powers-that-be, that was a rhetorical question, okay!? thanks.)
I think deployments nowadays are so much easier -- soldiers have social media, skype, gchat... whatever. And they always seem to be so available! We didn't have that. Superman had work to do. I had work to do. And somehow I dug up the foresight in an at least twice a week phone call to know that it would all work out.
This time it's different. It's been a while since Superman's deployment, but a part of me is beginning to think that Superman's mini-deployment (a.k.a. the Academy) is way more difficult. No communication allowed during the week. I got more phone calls while Superman was in IRQ than within a few hundred mile radius. So we don't talk.
But sleep.
Sleep. That's what I miss the most this week. That experience of deployment pseudo-sleep is coming back to me now.
My mind is always racing a million miles a minute with endless thoughts, task lists, anxieties...
So what's an Appleite to do when her thoughts won't let her rest her head, and the double digits on the clock that signal bed time have transformed into single digits that signal a new day?
Get out. Literally. Get out of the apartment and go to the wonderful Greek diner a few blocks up. One of the hundreds -- no, thousands -- of places in the city that are open 24 hours. And not just open. But occupied. Full of sleepless-in-the-Apple people who are on a date with themselves. The diner is more than just a place for a midnight snack. It's a cult of people who have no idea who the heck Superman is, but they get why I'm there. Because they have the same symptoms.
The best place to have insomnia is in the city that never sleeps.
