Odd thoughts that are strangely comforting

[Swoopy]

When I can't sleep at 4am, I find it oddly comforting to imagine a woman thousands of years ago- Paleolithic era, say- who also couldn't sleep and lay awake worrying about similar sorts of things- how to get her DS to get up and go on the mammoth hunt rather than sleeping in or what to feed everyone in the morning when her family had eaten all the nuts last night that were supposed to be for today (possibly giving away my lack of knowledge of the Paleolithic here).

Does anyone else take comfort in odd things like this?

When I was little, I never found it easy to fall asleep. I used to tell myself elaborate stories between lights out and going to sleep. Not that surprisingly, I ended up a novelist. These days I deliberately avoid my own stuff. I tell myself the plots of long 19thc novels.

I think about the cliffs and mountains and trees that were here long, long before I was born and will still be here long, long after I die. Puts everything in perspective.

@bluebunny1 that is heartbreaking.

Oh my god 😭

What an amazing woman, but how must have her dad felt letting her go 😭😭😭

I always find it relaxing when I think of me and DH driving through the countryside where there is no traffic in front or behind us. Just us on the road. Fields as far as the eye can see. Only birds and animals about. We've no idea where we are going, just seeing where the road takes us.

Ok, now I'm going to be thinking about your grandmother too, how amazing?!

@MurderousCheekbones
she would have liked that:) she was definitely an early feminist and a supporter of women in general. I always thought of her story as quite inspiring (sorry if it upset anyone).

I think this is really helpful and comforting, so many of these threads today and the news etc are full of people complaining about what awful times we live and presenting us with a really depressing view of the world… when really ( at least comparatively speaking) we are so lucky to live in this age and it’s good to be reminded of that when there is so much doom and gloom surrounding us.
Sorry that was a really long sentence! 😂

When I was young and would wake up at 3 or 4 in the morning I used to panic, feeling like the only one awake in the world made me feel really unsafe and scared.
My grandpa had been a baker all his life and when I stayed at his house he told me how you are never alone early in the morning because that is when all the bakers are up making bread and croissants for everyones breakfast. He said if I stood very still by the window I might even smell the baking coming in on the morning breeze.
He had big warm hands that he said were perfect for bread and terrible for pastry and he would hold my shoulders until I calmed down. Talking in his deep quiet voice about how the bakers would be lining up all the buns on the trays and polishing the display cases and waiting for the deliveries to come in. And to think of them, all floury, getting ready for the day and it was okay to be awake too.

As an adult, feeling stressed and exhausted on nightshifts at 4 am, I still like to think of all the bakers getting up and putting on their aprons and getting things all ready in their little shops.

@bluebunny1 your grandmother sounds fantastic.

I always have to get up for a wee in the early hours and when I get back in bed I always think ‘I may die today’. This started in my late teens when I studied Buddhism and it’s bizarrely comforting rather than depressing. I find it really puts everything into perspective and stops me worrying about the small stuff.

On the odd occasion when I can’t sleep, since childhood (around age 5) I’ve had this image of being in space but in the middle of an absolutely huge hand curled up in the middle of it, all warm and safe while the hand moves around. Totally insane but I feel so secure and loved and I always get to sleep quickly when I think of that.

As a lifelong insomniac, listening to podcasts has been a lifesaver. I also listen to talk radio stations too.

I like to imagine there's a multiverse and for every fork in the road I took there's a version of me out there who did something different. I like to think that all the worst mistakes I've made in my life just didn't happen in one of those universes because that version of me made a different choice. It's so daft to say but I find it a comforting thought when I'm feeling regretful. Even if there are versions of me out there who made worse choices, the thought of it still dampens the "what if" noises in my brain.

@ByGrabtharsHammarWhatASaving you post reminded me of this Sylvia Plath quote….
‘I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.’

Wow! That’s incredible. What happened to her dad though?

I think about my old secondary school. It closed down several years ago now and was demolished. I imagine I am walking in the front door, and virtually map out each room in my mind, and think about key memories in each room. It amazes me how so much can go on in a single location...yet that location not exist anymore. It's like the ground has secrets. Strangely comforting!

I sometimes imagine a day where everything went really well. If I feel things have gone wrong, that I made bad choices or other people upset me, I replay events the way I wish they had gone.

I love this!

When I was younger I was (probably like most peers) ego-driven, centre of my world, no1 etc.

Now I'm in middle-age and having recently lost both parents, I'm increasingly aware that we're all just moments in time.

I find that strangely comforting and it's making any ego I have left slowly diminish and prepare me for an old age where it's the simple things that will matter.

So this will sound much darker than as I experience/ think of it:

When tbh G's are very difficult and challenging I think about how if I was dead much of the Robeson would disappear with me. That maybe the problem is mine because thinking makes it so.

Things & Problems.

When I can't sleep, I imagine all the places I've been that day - school classrooms, shops, rehearsal spaces, etc which were full of noise and people but are now dark, quiet and locked up for the night. Strange but comforting!

My DD6 was happy to go to sleep at the thought of either making loom bands or knitting 😂

I used to do this but about Madonna!

I wonder what Madonna is doing right now?

I love this quote. It has always stuck in my mind.

Wow. Now that is something worth holding on to!

I imagine I’ve been dead for thousands of years, then woken up in my bed, with my husband next to me in my home. And appreciate every little thing. The sounds of him breathing, the warmth of the duvet, the way the room looks.