I can’t stop thinking about how my husband says he sees two of me.

It’s 2 a.m. and my baby is asleep on my lap, her breath so shallow and sweet that I’m afraid to move, and I find myself thinking about how my husband says he sees two of me.  I’ve been thinking a lot about the other one lately.  The other one of me.  

Maybe it’s the sleep deprivation.  Everyone warns you about those first few months (years?) with a baby – the constant wakings and night feedings and rocking rocking rocking them to sleep.  Here I am, afraid to move, afraid to blink, afraid to breathe.  If it wakes her, we start all over again – the nursing, the singing, the counting backward in my head from one hundred to make sure she’s really asleep so I can stop rocking.

My eyes have become accustomed to the variations of black that fill her nursery (formerly my studio, oh, how I miss my studio).  I can see her tiny hand as if light comes from inside her.  Her eyelashes on her cheek.  My whole world here in my lap.  It wasn’t so long ago she was inside me, this same person, under a thin layer of skin, all sharp elbows and knife knees.  She is my whole world.  And what did my world used to be?  I had a life that wasn’t her, but now there’s no room for it.  It’s been shoved in a closet and is buried under burp cloths and bath toys.

Earlier, I saw something in the corner – a slither of movement – but when I looked harder, I realized it’s a sleep sack hanging on the back of the closet door.  I’ve been doing that a lot lately… seeing something out of the corner of my eye and then realizing it’s nothing.  Even in daylight.  And in the middle of the night when I can’t sleep, I’ve started thinking about how Rick says there are two of me. 

The first time it happened was several years ago; we were on vacation and he’d just told me he loved me.  My husband wasn’t even my boyfriend yet, just a man I wanted to know in every way you can know someone.  A month prior when I was out of town on a job, we met on an app and had a beer and then realized we worked for the same company.  It felt both foolish and fateful.  The fact that Rick and I worked together gave the situationship a sexy secretive beginning that made every look feel forbidden and every stolen kiss explosive.  

After a month, I returned home and we realized we missed each other.  We decided to meet up in Hawaii for a week, an idea that my women friends found irresponsible if not fully unhinged.  I was already falling in love with Rick so the pineapple coffee air of Maui, the body temperature ocean water, the bottomless mai tais sent me plummeting over the cliff.  I felt safe with Rick, sweetly calm and confident in us, sloppily happy.  The sex was fantastic.  Everything was smooth, smelling of sunscreen and shave ice.  

We were staying in a small house a couple of blocks from the beach.  It was on the property of a larger house that was occupied by a couple who cracked tall boys before breakfast and sported matching jack o’lantern grins.  That first night, I found myself checking under the bed and behind the shower curtain when we came back from a night of rum and sashimi and eager kisses and sunset views.  I shoved the dead bolt into place, afraid of our neighbors for no good reason, but forgot my anxiety promptly when Rick came up and moved the hair from my forehead.  Little did I know that the threat was not coming from outside.  Before I knew it, we fell into bed, clothes forgotten on the tile floor. 

I don’t know what time it was that first night when I woke up; it was pitch black and I had to pee.  Rick’s deep exhales ruffled the hairs on my neck and made my heart flutter.  I could see a strand of moonlight under the bathroom door.  I peeled myself out of Rick’s warmth and my feet moved across the cold tile.  I shut the door behind me, urinated piña colada, wiped and flushed. I stared at my sex hair in the mirror and smiled at myself.

I turned off the light and caught movement out of the corner of my eye.  Fuck!  What is that?

It was me, in the mirror.  I looked different in the dark.

I stepped out of the bathroom and slipped toward our bed.  That’s when I heard it.  Movement, frantic scurrying.  

Rick bumped into the bedside table, fumbling for the lamp.  He turned it on and I saw him, sitting up in bed, staring at me in terror.

“Where were you?” he asked.

“I was in the bathroom.”  

He looked at my side of the bed.  His eyes scanned the room, searching for something.  I couldn’t help but look around too, my eyes straining into the shadows.  I couldn’t tell if he was truly awake, he looked glassy-eyed and slack-jawed.  

“What’s wrong?” I asked.  Part of me wanted to go to him, to put a hand on his back, to comfort him.  Part of me wanted to back away, slip into the bathroom, and lock the door. 

Rick stood up, trying to put a puzzle together when he was clearly missing a few pieces.  

He said, “I woke up and you were sitting up in bed, smiling at me.  Like you’d been watching me sleep.” 

He saw the look in my eye.  “I’m serious.  And then I heard the bathroom door and turned over and you were coming out of the bathroom.  I looked back and you were still there, in bed.  Smiling at me.  I actually thought the one of you that was coming out of the bathroom was my imagination because you were so real.  Right here next to me.” 

I glanced at the spot next to him.  No one was there.

My laugh had a hollow sound, “You were dreaming.”   

“No, I wasn’t.”  His voice was heavy.  “I wasn’t.”  He looked at me, looked through me.  “There were two of you.”

“Then what happened?” I asked. 

“Nothing.  I turned on the light, and…”  He trails off, glances around the room once more.  “I must’ve been dreaming.”

I chuckled, this time with more heart.  He shook his head, but a smile crept into his beard.  He opened his arms and I climbed into his sleepy warmth.  We started kissing and the other one of me was quickly forgotten.

I just saw it again, while I was typing this up. Slight movement out of the corner of my eye – like a shadow passing by outside the window, casting its slippery darkness on the wall over by the bookshelf full of soft toys and tiny shoes.  That bookshelf used to hold adult things, art things, things for the life I had before this tiny creature crawled into the light.  I leaned forward, squinting into the milky dark, but the room is empty.  The little warm body in my lap is squirming and squeaking softly like air being slowly let out of a balloon. 

I’m going to attempt the dreaded transfer into the crib and see if I can get some sleep myself tonight.  Because I haven’t been sleeping much.  And sleep is important.  It’s only in the middle of the night when I’m nursing or rocking rocking rocking that I think about the other one of me. 

Or the thing I never told Rick.  That he wasn’t the first boyfriend to have seen her.

If this has happened to anyone else, I’d love to hear about it. Sometimes it just feels so lonely here, in this rocking chair.