But What If I Have Bad Dreams?

Okay, so first of all, I'm much better now. ThankyouAntibiotics. I'm not 100% mind you, which is what made last night (as I type this it is 4:30 in the morning, and I have woken and cannot seem to find my way back to sleep...) so interesting. Although I had plans to hang out with a friend last night, I made a last minute arrangement to help another friend out and babysit her kids. This may seem really generous, but she coerced me with a bottle of wine and even ended up paying me (and my friend and I still got to hang out because he came over for dinner after les enfants went to bed), so hold off on congratulating me too hard now. In any case, I sure did give my lungs a workout in the early part of the evening when I found myself chasing her three year old and her one and a half year old around the playground at the local park!

But that's really neither here nor there at this point. It's 4:35am and I am wide awake, and for the first time in over a week, it's not because I'm coughing.

Maybe it's my good ol' travel anxiety rearing it's annoying head again? I do leave to go rehearse in Montreal for a week on Tuesday, after which I will be back in Toronto for a mere six days and then off again to St Louis. FOR THE ENTIRE SUMMMER. Yep, it's the longest I will be away from anywhere I've called home since I left Vancouver to move to England/Toronto almost ten years ago now. And it's not like all those mini (as in, a few days to a few weeks-long) absences have been easy to do...

Oh, what is it that makes it so hard for me to leave?!?!

(Oh fine, fine, I admit that that's a dumb rhetorical question, probably only there for dramatic effect. I know exactly what it is that makes leaving so hard for me, and there's just not really a need for me to explore that here and now.)

So, before my friend left me with her kids this evening she told me quickly and quietly that typically before her three year old son goes to sleep at night he asks "What if I have bad dreams?" Thank goodness she told me what the correct answer is to that question, because quite frankly, after about 25 years worth of bad dreams and sleeplessness, I certainly still haven't figured out how to deal! Apparently the answer is: "you just roll over and think about all the people that love you." Unfortunately, I think that's precisely what's keeping me awake right now.

"All the people that love me?" Well, there's my super-close, joined-at-the-brain sort of best friend, Devon, who moved back here to Toronto (after a very long absence) so recently that we will be missing our first summer together in years, because this time I will be away. Um, and isn't the summer what we Torontonians put up with this city for the other 9 months of the year for? Uh-huh, sure is. And then there's Thea, whom I would probably count among the reasons that I moved to this city in the first place (post-England.) When I say goodbye to Thea in a few weeks, it will be for much more than just three months; because before I return to Toronto from St Louis in September, Thea will have left for grad school in Texas. And she's not my only best friend who won't be here when I get back in the fall. It's looking like my dear, lovely and talented friend Anthony will have his american work visa sorted out by this summer and will be moving to New York City, liklely in July. Mark's girlfriend Christie meanwhile is leaving in a mere few weeks to move permanently to Peterborough, which means that if she makes it through her three month "probationary phase" and doesn't hate it, she will be staying, and Mark will be joining her. I'm not even sure how to count that loss - it's like an extremely painful two-for-one deal. Nevermind the fact that Alison has already left, to be a CBC reporter in New Brunswick for the year, but I'm not going to fool myself into believing that her work will take her back to Toronto anytime soon after this first contract is up.

No, I must accept that the landscape of my life here in the T-dot is changing drastically, whether I like it or not. So, maybe it's a good thing then for me to be going away myself for a few months...? To begin to explore the definition of my own life independent of the community I've worked so hard to create for myself over the last ten years?

Well, if I have to.

And I do have to. And I can. And I will. And I will survive - most likely I will thrive even. And I will count among my lucky stars the wonderful community of loved ones that I have spread all across the globe. Sounds like a good excuse for some anxiety-free travelling now doesn't it?

Just one last question though:
What do I do if I have bad dreams?