I fell asleep the first time with gritted teeth and a head full of mantras; look up, look far, survive survive, don't expect it to ever end, better learn to deal with it... You're not in paysan France you're in hostile consummerist territory and you have work to do before you can find a warmer place.
I've chanted those ringing thoughts a thousand times, while spitting blood and vitriol in high school and trudging through a jungle with a sixty pound backpack.
Sometimes expecting the worst is important. This doesn't preclude hope, or dreams, it simply takes away the bite of disappointment and sometimes, sometimes, it brings the dazzling bright lights of early respite.
The first time I fell asleep, I was thinking of what time I had to wake up, what book I would read on the metro, how to avoid the man who waits for me now, every evening, on the corner of the Place du March�.
I was very carefully thinking of very little.
I woke up to an unfamiliar phone, ringing through an hour's deep sleep, ringing through dreams of parrallel certificate queries...
Waking up to the phone used to mean reaching over to foot of the bed, lying back luxuriously and muttering words to comforting voices from the perfect warmth of my canopy.
Yesterday it meant bitter autumn cold, bare feet and bare breasts, and racing against the answering machine in the other room.
But it was princess. The sudden fear of waking up to bad news, the knot of stress that has been tied in my heart since I woke up my first morning here, all gone, gone...
Her voice, stories of the bar, this boy and that girl and airline seat sales and cheap long distance rates.
I couldn't stay up, couldn't stand straight for long, my toes curled against the frozen floor, but when I climbed back into bed it was to two simultaneous emotions.
Heartache, and warmth...
She'll be here soon, in a month, six weeks, two months, but I'll hug her again and for a while that thought outweighed how far away her voice was in the chill, and I suddenly all too aware of the distance in the night.