Sleep Keeper Read Online Free PDF Page B

happening… living the same day over and over… never enjoying the freedom that I should. School. Work. Mom. School. Work. Mom. Isn’t that for middle-aged people?
    But, to be honest with myself, I couldn’t handle socializing day in and day out with those people either. Talking about the meaningless jibber jab; gossiping like high school all over again. Was there a happy medium? I daydreamed of the day I graduate college and move away from all of this. Live somewhere less intense. I would spend a few hours at my dream job, then come home and play with my kids, pick vegetables from the garden and have dinner with my family and true friends. My weekends would be filled with barbecues and hikes… and to top it off, the sun would always shine and I would never grow old. Hey, if this was my dream I could have whatever I wanted.
    Back to reality though, I should have enjoyed life more. I should have tried new activities, new foods, and new adventures. I should have travel, learned something new, attended plays and musicals, threw parties and stayed up late laughing and drinking with friends. But… Mitchell and I really didn’t have many friends left. Most of our friends moved on and found new groups. I have too much studying to learn something new, not enough money to take a vacation, and I spent my weekends at Mom’s taking care of her house.
    My parents both decided to retire early together last year and they were the happiest I had ever seen them. Dad’s death shortly after was unexpected. He was in good health and there were no warning signs, at least any we knew of. Mom had come inside from gardening one afternoon and found him lying on the bedroom floor, dead. Heart attack.
    Since then, Mom hadn’t been the same. It took months to simply get her dressed and out of the house. She ate very little and spoke even less. It broke my heart to see her in such pain. She looked as though she had lost her soul mate. She probably had.
    The hardest decision I made was to move out anyway. Mitchell’s parents were not hurting for money, so when they bought a condo close to campus for us both, we couldn’t refuse. Mom was excited for me. She loved Mitchell and wanted me to go live my life. My dad thought I was too young to live with a boy, regardless if that boy had been attached to my hip for eight years. He was adamant that I not move in. That was right before he passed away.
    When my freshman year of college started, I couldn’t dare to leave Mom alone. At the end of the year, Mom and I debated back and forth about it. I didn’t want to leave her alone, but she insisted I go. In the end, I decided that I wanted to start living my adult life, so last month I moved in with Mitchell. Since, Mom had taken a turn downhill. She wasn’t taking care of the house or yard, wasn’t eating properly, and was even more distant. I couldn’t help but wonder if she would get better if I moved back in with her. I felt selfish for not running back to her, but I wanted to live my own life. Was that wrong?
    Even though I moved out, I stopped by daily after class and work. One would think my brother would help out, but that was hardly the case. He was always self-absorbed in some new demented element of his life.
    Jeremy was three years older than me but you couldn’t tell from his behavior. One Easter at my grandparents’ house when Jeremy was four years old, he wandered alone into their backyard. They had a chain-linked fence around their pool, but on that day, it was not locked. The rest of the family was in the house preparing for Easter dinner and didn’t notice that Jeremy slipped away. They found his body floating face down in the water. After a debatable amount of time, depending on who was rehashing the story, they revived him. No one was sure how long he was unconscious but Mom claimed he was never the same after. Since I was just a baby at the time, I didn’t know the difference.
    Regardless of the cause, Jeremy never associated