sleeping alone

this is one of those nights that i miss having someone to sleep with.

i wrote words to this effect in an online conversation with sean last night. a casual remark, i thought, expressing what at the moment was a gentle sadness that had cropped up in the hour or so before sleep. i'm not sure if it was the various online conversations with a few interesting men that day, including sean, that prompted it, but i do know that by the time i was chatting with sean, the feeling was so prevalent that i felt a need to comment on it.

i thought that the occupation of that feeling in my psyche pretty much would end then and there, but the feeling stayed with me throughout the conversation (prompting me to comment on how the emotion was stronger than i realized) and well into the night. i had a restless sleep, and i awoke this morning with the same feelings i had when i went to bed.

i have to admit that i find it bizarre that even though the amount of time i have spent sleeping alone over the course of my lifetime far exceeds the time that i had a partner, i am still acutely affected by the lack of a companion in my bed. you would think that my body would recognize the former state as the more common and the latter as the unnatural, but the reverse is true. i have always preferred such sharing and tended to sleep better with someone beside me than when alone.

naturally, my phrasing of the term having someone to sleep with refers to not just the act of sleeping but also to the physical closeness and intimacy that accompanies having a bedmate (at least from what i remember. it's been so long since i've experienced that particular aspect and i'm talking about a trend that goes back to long before michael and i broke up). for me this has probably been the most difficult aspect of being alone. it is one thing to have friends to help in feeling connected and cared for, but there is nothing like sleeping with someone else to banish the loneliness. then again, reflecting on my last several months with michael, i have to acknowledge it is very possible to share a bed with another person and feel like love and intimacy are as far away as the earth is from the moon.