The Regret Of A Night Lost

I should be hap­py. Or feel­ing bit­ter­sweet, at least. On the one hand, I’m thank­ful to have had the chance to share so many things with her:

  • lis­ten­ing to Bring Me The Disco King (Lohner Remix), as she sat curled in my lap in the dark­ness of my room
  • runs for bub­ble tea before set­tling in for the night with a movie or two
  • a road trip to Toronto, where I got to intro­duce her to my friends, Pacific Mall, and drag­on’s beard can­dy
  • par­ties at Pat and Jen’s, with board games, Rock Band, deli­cious food, amaz­ing peo­ple, and gen­er­al silli­ness
  • moments like this
  • look­ing into her eyes while our bod­ies were locked in blan­kets on the liv­ing room floor
  • read­ing my favourite parts of The Prophet to her
  • just the two of us going to dim sum on a beau­ti­ful Saturday morn­ing, and intro­duc­ing her to a med­ley of new dish­es

But there’s one thing I regret, and that’s not being able to spend the night with her, for she had nev­er slept over, you see. Sure, there were times when we stayed awake well past sun­rise, with only the touch of hand and flesh as silent dia­logue, my desire to pro­long the plea­sure dri­ving my will to stay awake to every moment pos­si­ble with her. Those are some of my favourite mem­o­ries. But the sleep that even­tu­al­ly took us was only our bod­ies pass­ing out briefly from exhaus­tion, and when we woke, she’d be gone soon after.

There are oth­er things I wish I had had the chance to do while it last­ed — shar­ing a relax­ing bath, pho­tog­ra­phy and video ideas, get­ting involved in a deep co-op game — but none of them were as impor­tant as a night spent sleep­ing togeth­er.

A long time ago, I wrote about how a girl­friend helped me fig­ure out the impor­tance of the night because of my ear­li­er romances, and the sit­u­a­tions that nev­er let me share some­thing as sim­ple as sleep, the most inti­mate of inti­mates.

In a rela­tion­ship, shar­ing the night is more impor­tant than shar­ing flu­ids. Falling asleep with some­one is an accep­tance of trust, a way of say­ing that we’re com­fort­able enough to drift into our sub­con­scious minds.

Perhaps it was my fault for keep­ing her awake. I won­der now, if on one night, I should have let myself sleep, instead of let­ting our pas­sion take us long into the next day.

3 comments

  1. Jeff, you old roman­tic you, Consider this news item from the BBC and per­haps you’ll feel less sor­row over miss­ing spend­ing the night with some­one [and maybe she snored…]:

    Sleep spe­cial­ist Dr Neil Stanley told the British Science Festival how bed shar­ing can cause rows over snor­ing and duvet-hog­ging and robs pre­cious sleep. One study found that, on aver­age, cou­ples suf­fered 50% more sleep dis­tur­bances if they shared a bed. … He said the mod­ern tra­di­tion of the mar­i­tal bed only began with the indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion, when peo­ple mov­ing to over­crowd­ed towns and cities found them­selves short of liv­ing space. Before the Victorian era it was not uncom­mon for mar­ried cou­ples to sleep apart. In ancient Rome, the mar­i­tal bed was a place for sex­u­al con­gress but not for sleep­ing. Dr Stanley, who set up one of Britain’s lead­ing sleep lab­o­ra­to­ries at the University of Surrey, said the peo­ple of today should con­sid­er doing the same. „, He said poor sleep was linked to depres­sion, heart dis­ease, strokes, lung dis­or­ders, traf­fic and indus­tri­al acci­dents, and divorce, yet sleep was large­ly ignored as an impor­tant aspect of health.

    Story from BBC NEWS:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/2/hi/health/8245578.stm
    Published: 2009/09/09 09:07:35 GMT
    © BBC MMIX

    • Hahahah…my par­ents slept in sep­a­rate rooms too, and I always felt there was some­thing wrong with that. Maybe they were just doing it to keep the mar­riage going. Not that it mat­tered in the end.

      • Maybe they were just doing it to keep the mar­riage going…that’s real­ly fun­ny! But that could be true :)

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