I have been sleepwalking through my day, with fatigue burrowing into my synapses, making my head heavy with fog and obscured by clouds and each task I attempt is Herculean. This afternoon I found myself staring at the mechnical pencil in my hand with the thought and what exactly is this for again? fumbling in my mind.

This is not good.

I feel as if just one good night's sleep may help me reclaim myself from this muting, dumbing, dulling, creeping bone-and-blood-deep weariness. Although there is a slight fear of watch out you don't get depressed, it is that time of year again you know , although last year was the first year in perhaps a decade I didn't have the wintertime blues (such a light and airy phrase for something so leaden) - if only for the reason that the Battle to Get My Stuff Back and its accompanying Louse fury burned too hot to allow malaise to sneak its way in.

But just one night's good sleep, that's all I ask. I did get one Wednesday night, and figured on last night to be the night I topped it off, so to say, but it was not to be.

When I was in Massachusetts, Keith had called to tell me that he heard Cynthia (our roommate) fighting with her boyfriend, and then suddenly he heard her screaming - Keith was so shaken he left the apartment and spent the night at a friend's. Ever since I moved in, I suspected that Geraldo (her boyfriend) was a controlling asshole, but I didn't think it had gotten physical. So when I found out, what, two weeks ago, I didn't know what to do. I wasn't there when it happened, they didn't know Keith had been home, and dammit, I know how the shame makes it so you think you're gonna die if anyone finds out, the shame hurts more than the slaps and punches. I've wanted to make some kind of overture toward her, but how to do it without pushing her away deeper into it? And without antagonizing him? Matters are complicated by the fact that he lives there too - and dammit, I put a lot more stock into my personal safety than I ever used to.

(An aside to perhaps explore later: it amazes me how disenfranchised I had always been from my body - other people's claims to it always took precedence over my own, it didn't feel like it had too much to do with me anyway. Now I am terribly protective of it, which is a good thing but so very new. In bed with Ben Tuesday I would have these moments where I had to pull away from him because the panic button sounded an alarm of someone's touching you, invasion, retreat, retreat!. Again, it comes down to integrity. This is my body, mine to make choices about, and nobody gets to override them. My skin's a hell of a lot thicker than it ever was.)

So, anyway, yesterday Keith ran into Cynthia in the kitchen and she told him that she was kicking Geraldo out of the apartment for good that evening. Warned him that it might get loud, and apologized in advance. Keith decided to stay in my room until he left since it is the closest to the front door (he had plans to meet a friend). Just moments after Geraldo got home, Keith heard him yelling, the sounds of things breaking, and Cynthia screaming for help. (The screaming. I wasn't even there, and the screaming upsets and unsettles me. It brings back the night when the neighbors called the cops because I was screaming, shrieking, and when they showed up, as I was surrounded by shattered glass and hid my bleeding leg, I just wanted to die from the shame of knowing that people heard me. Even knowing better now, I still feel the residuals of that shame, as if somehow being reduced to animalistic shrieks of terror was any kind of reflection on me. I know it wasn't, yet still it stings.)

So Keith fled the apartment and called the police from the courtyard - from where he could still hear Cynthia, and the neighbors were coming out to find out what was going on - and then he left so he wouldn't get pulled into it, and called me while I was in yoga class, left a message on my voice mail to warn me not to come home. After class I met him in the neighborhood and we went back to the apartment together - I tried to call the police to find out what happened, but the precinct number just rang and rang, gotta love the NYPD - and thankfully it was empty. Neither of us wanted to spend the night not knowing if he was going to return, so I called Andi and Doron and they immediately welcomed me to spend the night (I shall sing their praises again, I am sure, but they are absolutely magnificent friends and I am so fortunate to have them.)

So, hence, another restless night.

Keith called me earlier this afternoon to tell me he spoke to Cynthia, who told him that Geraldo was arrested, she has an immediate order of protection, and most reassuring, the police took his keys to the apartment away and gave them back to Cynthia. That gives me some temporary sense of safety (I would really like to see the locks changed for good.)

And boy, am I feeling for her. Keith said that she was crying, saying how much she felt bad for him, for the hard things he was going through. How his family was the only family she had in the states. How much she doesn't want to lose his son. I know all of this. (What is so very hard about this also is being reminded of how I wasn't always so strong, how I would cry "but I love him!", how shaky I was. I need to remember that the strength I have now is no illusion.)

I haven't actually seen Cynthia myself in three weeks - I'll be home tonight and I hope I will see her. I want to talk to her, if she wants to. To let her know how not alone she is, to let her know I know how it goes, how he'll pull every kind of threat and manipulation to come back, how she'll want to take him back. To offer her the resources I took advantage of. To gently remind her of how safe we all need to be in our home.

Damn, this has shaken me more than I care to admit.

Thankfully I have a full weekend planned, one that will hopefully allow me to not dwell too much on those not-that-long-ago feelings of powerlessness. Tonight I am making a pumpkin cheesecake for tomorrow's Samhain ritual (and our last day of Grove) (I've never made the recipe before, but I am looking forward to the scents of cinnamon and ginger in the kitchen.) Then after Samhain, Ben is coming over; he offered to come over and make dinner for me and that was too sweet to turn down. I don't want to get stuck in a rut of never leaving the apartment with him, and would ordinarily have suggested going out and doing something, but I've got Samhain tomorrow and then the Walk to End Domestic Violence and the Nano kick off party on Sunday, and Ben's leaving Sunday for a NASA job fair in Baltimore, so you know what, I'm not in the mood to go out Saturday night and I betcha he's not either.

Oh god, did I hear anything remotely resembling sleep in those plans???

Something I need to be aware of: when telling Ben about the Louse, and then last night when emailing him about the stuff with Cynthia, I found myself slightly apologizing, still, as if I were apologizing for bring such ugliness out in the open, for subjecting him to it. It's not my fault. It's not Cynthia's fault. Do you think Geraldo or the Louse ever felt any shame?

But back to work for me - if I ever hope to make it home and get some rest, I've gotta get my stuff done here.

Wish me delicious slumber..