I’m an insomniac. Last night and much of the morning, I worked 14 hours to get seven and a half hours of interrupted sleep, which, for the uninitiated, equals about six whole hours of sleep. It’s enough, but barely. So, in case you see me wandering around and I seem to talk with no ability to stop, then pat me on the back and send me home for a nap.
I’m having coffee now. It’s helping.
There are aftereffects of insomnia that coffee won’t eliminate.
When I’m exhausted, I talk like someone who’s drunk. I hear myself making sense one minute and the next, getting all verklempt about something that happened fifty years ago. I lose my filter and might tell you about my sex life or repeat a dirty joke to your mother at tea. My stories don’t know how to end when I’m tired. And sometimes I lie because a deeper truth is more interesting than the story I began.
When I’m tired, sometimes I see magic more clearly, like the voluptuous nature of tiny flowers through a magnifying lens. People, sex is all around us. Sometimes it’s too much.
See. There I go.
When I’m tired, I snap at bored children.
When I’m tired, fiction and dreams rise up, sometimes with agonizing power. I don’t watch horror movies when I’m tired. The other night, I dreamed about a line drawing with googly eyes. He resembled something a five year old might draw with oversized eyes and sticks for arms and legs. His fingers were so long. He just kept staring at me and appearing out of nowhere. It was terrifying. Then, I was awake with him. Insomnia sucks.
When I’m tired, I stare into the abyss and it stares back. It has sad eyes. It has oversized eyes that can see through any darkness.
When I’m tired, it’s hard to think I’ll ever be able to turn away.
Thank you for listening, jules