Sleepless nights are perhaps the worst curse anyone can ever get.

Thought is muddled and paranoid.

Small noises, imperceptible during the day — senses overloaded without knowing it– become scenarios full of horrible possibilities.

Was that the sound of rolling marbles?

What was that beeping?

Where does that horrid humming come from?

______

Whoever decided that DC wouldn’t have tall buildings was a smart person. You can still see the stars, despite the glow of all those streetlamps. I was looking out the window earlier — cool breeze hitting my cheeks and the vague scent of urine making my nostrils flare– and wondering who else was awake.

It always seems like you’re the only person who’s ever been or shall ever be awake at 3 am.

The distant train sounds should clue me in to the fact that I’m not alone, but I can’t see those people.

I see a few lights on in the houses nearby, instead.

I wonder what they think about. I wonder if they compose blog entries in their mind, or if they feel a deep, desperate, chronic panic to be left behind by the sleep wagon. I wonder if they compose long apologetic letters about why they don’t agree with others’ maternal philosophies or why they just cannot support other women’s dilemmas on the grounds of finding them immature, petty or decidedly stupid.

I wish I could support people and not judge them for what I feel are the wrong choices but it seems I can’t. And that haughty arrogance that I display by day comes to nip at my heels by night.

It’s at night that all those ghosts of people I feel I’ve wronged come back to ask me why. Or rather, my mind asks me why. Why must I be such a horrible person? Why can’t I just grit my teeth and say the kid is beautiful, like everyone else? Why can’t I just let it go and let people go about their businesses? Why must I be this wide-eyed Justice? (This must be why she wears a blindfold).

And so I trail on downstairs, chasing the elusive Sleep while trying to forget all the rude things I’ve said or done and the book I pick up, “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” sends me into this horrible anxiety where I feel the main character’s pain so close and so raw and I want to run upstairs and wake the baby up and cover him with kisses that it drives me insane. I don’t know how she does it, and I can’t read fast enough to make her stop. I want to hug her and slap some sense into her.

I sit here, like I have so often lately, driving myself insane.

I hate not being able to go back to sleep.

06 Jun This entry was published on June 6, 2006 at 3:36 am and is filed under Weblogs. Bookmark the permalink. Follow any comments here with the RSS feed for this post.