Wednesday, April 09, 2008
An Insomniac's Dreams
When sleep won't come.
Sometimes, like right now, it can't be lured to return with bird seed or catnip. A shot on Jeopardy or Dancing with the Stars? No, sleep is a determined withholder.
It won't come in the window or up the driveway in its four-wheeler of unconsciousness and dreams. Not even a two-wheeler loaded with nightmares.
So, night becomes day, all night, with only a spritz of night in the early afternoon.
Where it has disappeared to, I know not. It seems like a cat that has escaped through the bedroom window but can't make the return leap from the ground to the open window.
Come back, little Sheba (or Tabby or whatever). The window is still open and the cream is still fresh.
But it listens not, that feline runaway. Night is one long awakening with nothing to do; day becomes one long drowsy, but not sleepful, wait in a bus station.
The doctors push pills down my throat -- anti-insomniants, anti-depressants, anti-low-blood pressure pills. And the sleep still doesn't come.
Funny thing about sleep, it is one of those few things humans can't force on themselves. They can force themselves to diet, to exercise, to trim the rose bushes, but not to sleep, perchance to dream.
So here I am forced to sit in a perpetual stupor, waiting for the normality of sleep to slip back through the flower garden and, with one super-feline leap, spring back through the window.
Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Please come home.
Sometimes, like right now, it can't be lured to return with bird seed or catnip. A shot on Jeopardy or Dancing with the Stars? No, sleep is a determined withholder.
It won't come in the window or up the driveway in its four-wheeler of unconsciousness and dreams. Not even a two-wheeler loaded with nightmares.
So, night becomes day, all night, with only a spritz of night in the early afternoon.
Where it has disappeared to, I know not. It seems like a cat that has escaped through the bedroom window but can't make the return leap from the ground to the open window.
Come back, little Sheba (or Tabby or whatever). The window is still open and the cream is still fresh.
But it listens not, that feline runaway. Night is one long awakening with nothing to do; day becomes one long drowsy, but not sleepful, wait in a bus station.
The doctors push pills down my throat -- anti-insomniants, anti-depressants, anti-low-blood pressure pills. And the sleep still doesn't come.
Funny thing about sleep, it is one of those few things humans can't force on themselves. They can force themselves to diet, to exercise, to trim the rose bushes, but not to sleep, perchance to dream.
So here I am forced to sit in a perpetual stupor, waiting for the normality of sleep to slip back through the flower garden and, with one super-feline leap, spring back through the window.
Here kitty, kitty, kitty. Please come home.
