Insomnia

I had almost forgotten what it feels like not to be able to sleep. To have your mind whirling with so many different thoughts and images that shutting your eyes is impossible. Ideas bombard me whenever I lean my head back to rest, and then I'm off again. Moving because I can't sit down.

I keep seeing the world flashing past behind my tightly closed eyelids, like a home movie set to loop. Over and over. Stimulus flooding my senses while I try to focus on something calming. Music and smells. Things I saw a year ago. They keep coming...

I had almost forgotten what it felt like to live in that fringe of the world that comes after midnight. The time of day when only people like me are awake. Life takes on a different hue at night, a different tone. The normal rules of society seem somehow relaxed. The people I talk to don't feel the need to pretend ...don't need my approval. It's easy to get comforatable in that world, existing without daylight.

I watch people move through the morning hours, all business and sunshine. They take pride in their ablitily to swish and slide through the glow of noon. The brilliance of the blue sky is more pronounced when you've spent long moments memorizing the blackness of midnight. Most of the time, they don't even notice me. I am an invisible part of that world....stuck in the time between that final meal of the day and the first cup of coffee.


.... and I am not alone.