Insomia - Polly

Insomnia

It’s night sweats, and thoughts coming in waves that you can almost see crashing onto the backs of your eyelids. Like panic in slow motion, because the lights are off and the sound of silence buzzes like an almost-soothing lullaby, but not quite. Counting sheep, ice cream cones, job application rejections, sexual partners, whatever - it’s all the same thing and sometimes it works. but usually it doesn’t.  So tired you can’t sleep, as they say, so you get up and pad over to your laptop, one hand rubbing your eyes and the other outstretched and aiming at the apple symbol. the only thing glowing in the darkness.  maybe an hour or three later you’ve written five pages of slop, of drivel, with a few sentences of brilliance swirled into the mess.  When you do finally collapse into sleep, the insomnia temporarily stayed, you have something to show for it. At least there’s that.

I’m jealous.

I fall asleep on my third breath after turning out the light, and wake to the sound of my iPhone alarm, what, it can't be, I just fell asleep five minutes ago! Dead to the world, like a baby, a blanketed beached whale. I have no middle-of-the-night blabber folder saved to my desktop, and I wish I did. I wish for once I didn’t sleep clear through eight or nine hours out of every twenty-four. What a waste.