The sun rose over the quiet, empty valley. I didn’t have a very good reason to be watching it, other than that I couldn’t sleep and the sun was the source of all life and light in the world. I’m not sure which of those reasons were more motivational. Either way, it was me and Sunny again. I’d been awake for 39 hours.
The first hours of sleeplessness aren’t even noticed. You’re supposed to be awake. Then the day tilts toward the evening and you get a little winded. Bedtime looks inviting, doesn’t it? Not to us insomniacs. To us, bedtime is a personal threat. You spend hundreds of hours staring at the ceiling, thrashing to find a cool spot in the sheets, doing “box breathing,” meditating, counting sheep, whatever it is that you think will wring the advent merciful sleep from your gnarled consciousness. None of it works. The refuge of your 600-count Egpytian-cotton sheets has become a nest of the serpent of insomnia. Forgive the elaborate metaphor--sleeplessness deprives the brain of logic.
The newborn sunlight made the valley look a bit hazy and out-of-focus, or else that was just my blurry eyes. I turned and began the clamber back down the steep knob of rock and soil, back towards the kitchen and the morning that awaited me. Routine can be comforting.
It can also be asphyxiating.
I cracked two eggs in the frying pan, same pan, same eggs as every other morning. I am told that routine and stability are the keys to somnolence. I eat the eggs, but can’t taste them. I take a shower. I don’t remember it after I dry off. I put on fresh clothes. You are supposed to do these things and so I do them. I’ve always done what I’m supposed to do.
Then I go and sit because I don’t have anything else that I need to do. I work odd shifts at the hospital--every day and night for a week, then not at all for ten days. The days off seem nice at first but when you’re awake all night, the days alone are endless. Everyone else goes to work, except for a few moms with toddlers, who also seem like people who have done exactly what they are supposed to do.
I sit until I can’t sit anymore. I get up and put my shoes back on. I make an egg sandwich and put it in my jacket pocket. Then I put the jacket on, I go back outside. The sun hits my face. I turn towards it and begin to walk. I do not lock the door.
©2020 by Jessie Hanson. All rights reserved.