Thursday, January 29

tomorrow is going to be ghastly


Don’t you love it when you stand up, and you can still see clearly. And you go to bed, and you fall asleep. And you have a virus, and two weeks later it’s gone. And you eat a meal, and your body digests it.

And don’t you hate it when it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work, and it doesn’t work.

So much is controllable, but the very most essential things don’t seem to be.

This evening, my world began to spin. I am so long past enjoying merry-go-rounds. I will never ride a roller coaster again, except for these times where I am utterly sleep deprived. After weeks of scraping for some dregs of sleep, the wheels are falling off. I stare at walls and leave my eyes unfocussed because it’s easier. I hope that God will help me walk to the kitchen to get my lunch. I left the gym after ten minutes, because the benefits of not fainting tomorrow didn’t seem to outweigh the detriment to my glandular pain today. Even when I close my eyes, my brain spins around and around. I dare not change position in bed, but I am lured by the idea that each new position offers a comfy door way to sleep. It’s a lie, because no position works, and with each change my brains acrobatics increase. 

Vertigo, my body’s cry for mercy.

During the day I am like a diseased robot. She walks, she talks {incoherently}, and even does, but she is laboured, and she is slurred, weighty, and unwell. She is programmed for sitting and staring, and she verbally coaxes herself to perform tasks.

Now I’m scared when evening arrives. As Ben twitches to sleep, I lie there, awake. The most alert I have been in my heavy day. I am a thought police woman, arresting every stimulating thought. It’s such a relentless job that it completely defeats the purpose. The most common offender is this,

“Tomorrow is going to be ghastly.”

And it’s true, so I only arrest it half heartedly.

I pop to the toilet one more time. Of course it’s the bladder.

I have one more bowl of cereal, because I need the energy.

Then I double the sleep potion so highly recommended to me. It contains hops, and valerian. They sound effective, but they don’t know how to find sleep either.

I write because I’m tired of thought-policing and because one day I will read this post and remember that dark patch of no sleep. It will be a memory, like the many other posts I have written. It will not be current. It will end.


It is no crime to merely exist; to just breathe is sufficient.