2am Thoughts 💭

 “You make him sleep for too long in the afternoon that’s why he’s not sleeping now”, said my upset husband during bedtime when I was making my little demon sleep who on the other side was completely into a different tangent of fun and play – Oh! I am talking about my 2 year old son.

I was dead tired after a hectic day and husband was feeling annoyed as son was not sleeping. O Yes! I could clearly understand why he was feeling so. I told him straight, “I am not in a mood so, turn to the other side and sleep now”. Post getting my non-consenting indication he postponed the action and slept immediately. Soon my son also slept so without any delay I dozed off at around eleven o’clock.

“What’s this noise?” I woke up with the clattering sound of the rains at around two am. “What next?” I said to myself. While lying in my cozy bed, I stared outside the huge glass window of my bedroom balcony. “Why did it happen?” I questioned again as I wanted to sleep uninterrupted till early morning.

Have you ever realized that this midnight waking up is quite a thought provoking time? Bizarre thoughts run in your mind and you simply feel helpless. I experience a whirlpool that is drowning me and of course it’s simply beyond my control or is it that I just don’t want to use my dominance and let it go loose.

“Why did she say that?”

“Nothing is gonna change?”

“Why it’s always about others?”

A lot of times some sort of negativity blankets me during midnight monologue.

Hey! Please don’t judge me; I am very positive and good at heart (chuckling).

“Why don’t you plan a second child”? “You have crossed 30, so if it gets delayed further you’ll have lots of problems”. “You might not be able to conceive further”. The words of my shrewd paternal relative started ringing in my ears. Just want to scream “Mind your business and stay out of my life forever as your words hurt me”. Deciding how many children, couples should have is not other people’s entitlement. Hope you agree here?

I further drifted to the afternoon telephonic conversation with my mother. The highlights were “Don’t do anything else for next few years, only concentrate on your child.” “Even with things like work from home and online work options you’ll get too occupied so better give all one sided attention to your little one”.

I drifted into a slightly different direction, holding the strings of my previous thoughts and questioned myself “Why does society serve all the work life balance, essentials into the platter of women?”

I am lucky to have a husband who helps with household chores, holds my hand and let me make my own decisions. Are all women that lucky?

After reaching home from work a Man relaxes, watches television, chats on the phone, haves dinner and goes to bed. But a woman coming back from work, quickly prepares dinner, makes preparations for the next day, makes everything spic and span, checks on kids’ academics, shuts off everything an then retires to bed. Oh! By the way, she also came back tired from her work. You noticed, right? Aren’t the rules different for both the working people? Why? Based on gender?

I thought where did it start? Orthodox society, traditional style of parenting, imbalanced norms set by the couple themselves or the choice of being non-vocal for the sake of everyone else.

I could go back and visualize how the eyebrows are raised in case of women like me. “She’s done some black magic on her husband” OR “She’s nicely making him dance on her tunes”. I got reminded of the funniest one - “He is completely in her grip.” Seriously, I started thinking how’s that done.

Why the mainstream makes couples like us feel so outcast? Why? When will it change? How? When? Feel Sad!

I slowly drifted back to sleep without getting any answers once again.

Got up in the morning to face the day with some new questions and realized they had their roots connected to my midnight 2:00 am thoughts.

Keertika Sharma