Apr 18: So Much Guilt

Talk about a time when you’ve felt a lot of guilt.

Why is it that lately I’m starting to feel more guilty because I’m choosing not to be completely honest about some of the major instances from my life, instead, opting to share only those that I actually feel comfortable sharing?? It’s because of these damn prompts!

On that note, allow me to focus on something that I’ve actually felt guilty about for a while now… telling my brother that he’s adopted.

My brother is five years younger than I am, and when we were younger, I began to tell him that he was adopted. It was usually mentioned whenever he and I were fighting, or when people were commenting on how completely different we are – and I’m talking complete opposites! So I’d make snide comments about the reason we’re so different is because he’s adopted, and he would get so incredibly upset and just start bawling, ‘SHUT UP, SHUT UP!! I’M NOT ADOPTED! YOU’RE LYING!! YOU’RE SO MEAN TO ME’, and that was the sign that I’d taken it to far. I’d try and apologise to him, but it’s hard to try and apologise to somebody and come across as being sincere when you’re trying to stop laughing long enough to get an actual sentence out.

In all fairness though, even my mother would have a little giggle whenever my brother would run off crying because of me being such a bastard! Granted, it wasn’t every time, but she did laugh, so I’m not the only one here to blame. I think she can take some of the responsibility as well.

Since moving to Melbourne, my brother and I pretty much lost touch with each other. I kind of know what he’s up to through Facebook, but other than that, we don’t reach out to contact each other. It’s something that actually makes me feel quite bad, that I have somebody like my own brother, and yet, I don’t really know anything about him, because we never speak. He literally is the complete opposite of me – we have absolutely nothing in common except our parents, and even then, I only acknowledge having one parent. I refer to mum’s ex-husband as ‘my brother’s father’ for a multitude of reasons, but my brother keeps in regular contact with his father, and his father’s side of the family, whereas I have purposefully ex-communicated myself from all of them, and I’ve never been happier.

I feel guilty that my brother and I have nothing in common. I feel guilty that we don’t speak. I feel guilty that we never see each other. The last time I saw my brother was two years ago when I had to fly interstate for a few hours for my grandmothers funeral. Before that, we hadn’t seen each other for a few years. Now we live at completely opposite ends of the east coast of Australia. I want to be able to even just Skype with him and his, now, fiancee, but even then I just struggle to comprehend how that conversation would go. He’s never been able to have a conversation with anybody. Like, NEVER. He would go and visit his father during school holidays and I’d speak to him when mum called, and all you would ever get out of him were one-worded answers. ‘Yep. Fine. Good. Nope. Alright. Hot. Yep. I think so. Maybe. Not yet. Yep. Yep. Nup. Yep. I guess so.’ It was just a constant string of questions. He was never forthcoming with information, and would never actually go into detail. You’d ask him how his trip up there was. Good. What did you do on the train? Nothing. Did you play your gameboy? Yep. Which games did you play? Dunno. Did you play Mario Brothers? Yep. What level did you get up to? Dunno?

So by this stage, I’m ready to start bashing my head against the wall. Even two years ago when he picked me up from the airport, after not seeing each other for I-don’t-even-know how many years, it was still the exact same conversation. Everything was a question, and I only got the same simple answers. Knowing that I’d have a 30-40minute drive of this was enough to make me want to just turn around and come home again. It was just painful.

I don’t know what he’s like with Mum, or even his fiancee, but even the couple of times I’ve spoken to her, she was pretty much the same… although she was at least able to construct a sentence and elaborate a lot better than my brother seems to be able to.

Hmmm, perhaps I should change that, and see if they have Skype? Make a positive change, and put have more of an interaction with my brother?

Speaking of which… I still haven’t received a wedding invitation…!! I guess that speaks volumes. Ironic, really.

Perhaps this is the payback for all those years of tormenting him and saying he was adopted?

Daily Prompt: Mr. Sandman

What kind of sleeper are you? Do you drop off like a stone and awaken refreshed, or do you need pitch black and silence to drift off to dream?

I could quite easily sleep for ten hours, wake up, get dressed, have some breakfast, and then go back to sleep for at least another three or four hours. When I’m particularly stressed, or suffering from considerably anxiety, all I want to do is shut myself away in bed for a few days and just sleep. When I’m on holidays, all I want to do is sleep.

I’m very much a deep sleeper. Sometimes it’s great, but sometimes it’s a bit scary.

Before I met Hulk, it never concerned me. I’ve always been somebody who loves to sleep – probably because I just can’t get enough of it.

Having a partner who is a diabetic is something that truly scares me. There’s been nights where he’s been in bed next to me having a hypo (where his blood sugar is dangerously low), and I’ve been completely oblivious to it. Generally speaking, a severe hypo means that he will sweat profusely, and lose the ability to move. His body begins to seize up, and sometimes he can start to shake / convulse slightly. He loses the ability to talk. The reality is, he can go into a coma in his sleep, or worse, die.

So for me, it’s truly terrifying to know that I’m such a deep sleeper. There have been several moments where I’ve been completely out of it and off in dreamland, and he’s been right next to me, having a severe hypo. Because he can’t move or really say anything louder than a whisper or a gasp, I’m completely oblivious to what is happening right next to me.

I’ve had a number of nights where this has happened, and I’ve woken up to find him like this, purely by chance. I don’t know how long he’s been in that state, but as soon as I realise what’s going on, it’s like an instant shot of adrenaline, and my brain goes into overdrive, and before I know it, I’m rummaging around in the kitchen looking for something sugary to give him in order to bring his blood-sugar levels back up.

The one thing that completely terrifies me is the thought that he could die in his sleep. He could die in his sleep, and I wouldn’t know, simply because I’m such a deep sleeper. Just the thought of it, sends shivers down my spine. God forbid that ever happened… I’d never be able to live with myself. The guilt would just be too much. I’m supposed to be looking after him and taking care of him!!

I’ve noticed that with Hulk, he’s quite tired lately. We both are. Taking on too much, pushing our bodies with our gym commitments, long hours in the office, late nights – it all takes it’s toll on the body. By the time the weekend comes around, we’ve usually got a lot of stuff to do, but really, all we want to do is just sleep. I’d love to be able to go to the gym Saturday morning, then come home, have some breakfast and then have a nap for a couple of hours. Get up, do some housework, go grocery shopping, and then come home for another nap.

The reality of being able to do that however… not an option.

Even when it comes to having a nap – I’m not one of these people that can have a 30min power nap and wake up feeling all brand new. If I have a nap, I need like 2 – 3 hours at least, otherwise I actually wake up feeling considerably worse than I was before I had my nap.

I know that there have been sleep studies done to show the optimal time for a nap, in order for it do be restful and restorative for the body, but for me, the rules don’t apply. I’ll close my eyes when I need to, and then I’ll open them again when my body says I’m ready to. That might be 2 hours, 8 hours, or 15 hours. When I was a teenager, I’d sometimes spend entire days sleeping.

I remember sometimes going to bed and sleeping the whole night, and the entire next day, having over 24hrs sleep – obviously because I needed it. I know that some reports have said that too much sleep is bad for you, but I tend to disagree with that. I don’t think that such a thing exists.

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