Sleeping Badly – Part 4

It’s late, and I can’t sleep. My mind races and chases sleep further away. My empty stomach rumbles, and that’s not helping. My wife’s periodic, convulsive fits of coughing exacerbate the problem, and I move to the living room to get away from the coughing, to sleep on the couch. I’m suddenly terrified by the weight of my mortality. I’m 28 years old, safe, healthy, strong, and scared of dying while lying on the couch in my living room at two in the morning. I think about what it will be like to die, and if I’ll be ready for it, if I’d be ready if I had to die right now. The absurdity of needing to be ready for something so absolutely inevitable occurs to me. I laugh at myself. I just can’t get my head around the permanent end of myself, though. I hold onto the thought, and I focus on it. I begin to panic, but I sustain it. The street lights are coming through the front windows of my house, and the plant on the windowsill is casting a shadow in the wall. The shadow is moving a little every time a car passes, and it’s actually a little bigger than life size. It looks like a massive cluster of insects, teeming on the wall, framed in moonlight and headlights. I hate insects, but I laugh again. In this solitude and comfort, I want nothing more than to sleep.

Sleeping Badly – Part 3

In the deep hours of the night, everybody is awake. All have been shaken, and nobody remains asleep. We have all taken notice. We have all taken inventory. It’s a sad difficult state of affairs. This night will pass without another wink of sleep. This night has been kidnapped by scrutiny and unease. We sit in shitty nervous laughter, stewing in our insanity like a pair of piss-soaked pants. It feels like we’ll never sleep again. We’ll turn on all the lights, each one in the house, and each one out in the yard. We’re not celebrating. We’re not drunk. We just want to see what’s coming. Our incandescent light will penetrate as deeply out into the heart of the night as it can and still fall short. It won’t keep anything away. It will only clearly illuminate what’s coming to kill us.

Sleeping Badly – Part 2

Last night was not a good night for sleeping. It was hot. There was a great deal of sweating, but not the fun kind. There were a lot of nightmares. It was like a horror movie marathon, one after another. My wife has gotten used to me waking up intermittently, yelling and/or hyperventilating. She used to ask me if I was okay. Now she just rolls over. It’s not that she’s insensitive. It’s that she’s just accepted that there’s nothing she can do to help. The only thing there is to do is endure them. I can rarely recall any details when I wake up. Rarely do I get any keepers out of my dreams. I just remember the emotionally painful, bad sleep. I’m so goddamn stupid, I can’t even sleep correctly.

Sleeping Badly – Part 1

The night is heavy, impossibly heavy, all the way up until sleep comes. As you try to gain distance from the previous day’s mess, the night won’t let you forget about tomorrow. It taunts you with the approaching morning, and all the impending struggles of the day to come. In the night you struggle to reflect, understand, and get a grip. In daylight you fail visibly and loudly. In the night you fail dimly and silently.

Debt

I gave myself to it, like I was a debt owed. I relinquished myself and all of my weight. The exchange was decisive but gentle. It happened with the smoothness and precision of a surgeon’s scalpel. I flowed out of it like hot blood. Nobody demanded reasons from me. Nobody questioned. It was self-apparent. All was repaid. I left.

I left on my own two feet. I’d never done that before. I’d always been a casualty. There were doors open, and nothing left for me there. No good reason to stay, but lots of good reasons to feel bad about leaving. I just walked out, off to my new destination.