Insomniac

This morning I had to face the truth and actually accept a label to stick onto myself. I’m an insomniac. Maybe not forever, not always. But now, here, yesterday, today, and probably tomorrow.

Some nights I sleep a couple of hours. Here and there, barely hovering over the sandy grit of wakefulness, touching down every so often to remind myself of how tenuous this sleep is. Other nights, and most of them, it’s an endless stretch of awakeness. Blink upon blink, neverending, until the night outside lightens by the millisecond and I can pretend it’s a new day, a new start.

It’s not the staying awake but the trying to sleep that is so exhausting. I spend my nights willing it to happen, cajoling my mind to shut itself down, negotiating with the universe for that moment when consciousness blinks off. And yet, and yet.

I can handle the fatigue, the exhaustion. It’s the falling apart that drains me of my ability to keep it together. It’s as if I’m floating through zero-gravity, and without this ceaseless effort of concentration, the edges of me begin to blur and slowly drift apart. I’m pulling away from my core. Like a puzzle picture that’s not quite fitted together; the loose edges getting looser.

It’s just empty space but it feels full, and I’m walking around tight with the crowding of empty. Nothing. Void. Today I am a blank.