References

I'm lying in bed, with my headphones on listening to soft and slow music. On really low so it's just whispering about like waves do on a distant beach when you're on holiday. Sprawled out next to me is the Possum, who is breathing a bit noisily and probably has an ear infection. He wasn't too miserable today until I tried to put him to bed, which was apparently a very bad idea. So I cajoled. And stroked. Then cuddled. Then cuddled and sang. Then lay him across my chest and sang until he got heavy and started snoring.

I love baby snores, even if they're associated with grumbly nights, because somehow, they're just beautiful. He's curling and uncurling his fist in his sleep, and it's hard to beat the temptation to reach over and touch his skin. The sweet sweaty smell of him. The mustiness of his scalp under his too long hair. The shirt pulled up over his belly showing the soft soft skin there and a belly button that you want to press.

He is perfect in sleep; stretched out diagonally next to me, his feet on my lap, kicking the keyboard occasionally. But I love him so much more when he is awake. His cheeky smile, his babble, his habit of lifting his hands innocently when he can't find something with the quizzical lift of eyebrows.

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I was so tired today - I got home from work last night around midnight, and as so often happens when it's the last shift in a block I couldn't fall asleep. The insomnia washing over me in waves as I tried futilely to just switch off and sleep. The hours ticking on by and reminding me that I had to get up and take the kids to school in just a few hours making me anxious and sleep even further away from my grasp, drifting off near two and waking groggily at 3 to the Possum.

This morning I prepared lunches in a dream, and dropped the 3 off at their respective daycares so that I could stretch out and catch up on my "weekend" sleep. But it wouldn't come. A rude guest that I'd prepared for and waited all week for, asI lay on my bed with Oscar the cat curled up in the crook of my knees and didn't sleep some more.

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Last night at work I was told that I should consider Emergency Medicine as a career as I'd be wasted in Radiology. This is from the same rotation that told me last year I wouldn't get a job as no one would give me a reference. You would think that would go a long way to taking away my anxiety of even turning up to work there every day - but it doesn't. I still feel small and stupid there, even though I know that I'm not. My logical self and my feeling self battle over it every shift as I prepare for work, the feeling self getting worked up into hysterics and breathing into a paper bag while the logical part tells her to harden the fuck up as she wields a mascara wand. But I have filed it into the part of my brain that lists all the reasons I shouldn't quit for the days when it's hard to remember not to.

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While lying on my bed, impotently waiting for sleep to come today I pondered the mysteries of eyeliner, and wondered if I could wear both eyeliner and red lipstick without looking like a $2 whore. Make up can be a little hit and miss with me, to the extent that some days I will carefully apply, look in the mirror and then wipe it all off. I find that some days I can wear make up and some days it wears me, and on those days it needs to be removed.

I have always liked red lipstick, and have had some somewhere, the rouge making me happy for some reason. My mouth is too small, and bright lipstick highlights that, but I've found that as I've become older I care less. I can't somehow contour my way to beign beautiful, so I'm doing what makes me happy instead. And of course, because this is how it works, I look better that way. I'm more me when I try to be me, than when I try to be a better, prettier, perkier version. Obviously.

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I am sad tonight, listening to my sad slow music and with my eyeliner from earlier smudged over my lower lid, as tears fall from tiredness and fatigue and something else so poignant. I hurt tonight. Hurt in those places that medication can never reach and that don't ever go away, not even in sleep. I think I'm losing a friend, a friend that is angry with me and hurt by and all sorts of things that I can't heal. Not with my hands or my heart or my voice. Not even my doctorly brain.And it whispers to me occasionally that it's proof again, that I'm just not worth it, not good enough. And no one will ever give me a reference.