You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
Sleepless nights.
I jerk awake.
It’s 2:34 am.
What the hell?
Why am I awake. I went to bed at 11:30.
I quickly do the math.
3 hours. 3 HOURS!
GO BACK TO SLEEP!
I can’t.
The room is dark, the world outside quiet.
It should be easy, like Early Gray Tea. But it’s not.
Why am I awake? Go to sleep. Stop thinking. No more thinking. Dream about black. Think about quiet. Oh no, you’re thinking again.
I close my eyes and stare into the back of my pupils.
There is a rich creamy darkness. It’s like delicious cocoa syrup dripping down the back of my optic nerve. I can almost taste the gooey richness draining down the back of my throat.
I feel an anesthetized stupor creeping up the base of my spine.
Ah, maybe I can re-engage with the dream.
Wham!
My mind is on fire.
It’s like a monkey in the zoo, who throws his food bowl at the glass in a fit of rage.
My thoughts are unstoppable, unfurling like thunder rolling across my brain.
Everywhere there are flashes of cerebral light, the synaptic circuitry firing like an 8 cylinder engine.
But thinking when you should be sleeping is not productive. It’s like running your car engine in the garage. The motor is warm, ready to roll, but it’s just sucking down gas, filling the space with carbon monoxide.
The thoughts are powerful and make my knee jerk, as if I’m a dog dreaming of running.
The inside of my eyes are a drive in theater broadcasting a lightning storm on a quiet summer night.
The interior of my skull is filled with paparazzi flashbulbs in a pitch black theater where nothing is happening but angst and thoughts and worry and anger.
Why angst at 2:34 am? Why anger at 2:34 am?
Where the hell is this coming from.
The subconscious is alive, on fire, demanding action to accompany random thoughts that begin and end like a dog’s bark in the distance.
I roll over and bang the pillow. It is animated and my heart races. Suddenly I am breathing hard.
Why am I breathing hard at 2:34 am. Sleep. Please wash over me.
I just want calm and quiet and sleep.
The darkness is filled with invisible subway cars crashing through a tunnel lined with a blank horizon. Have you ever tried to sleep through a Led Zeppelin Lazerium show?
I toss onto my stomach and bang my pillow again.
Sleep, please, sleep.
I try to ignore the rolling recital and silent rhetoric stabbing my frontal lobe. My eyes search the darkness and see images of family, friends, jobs, work, sports.
I am held hostage by my own memories, a lifetime uncorking before me, escaping into the mental void like some run-a-way Aladin’s lamp waking up from a 100 year sleep.
The room is silent. The room is dark. The neighborhood is peaceful. Yet I hear the noise, the chatter, the words of worry and deep rumination. They are banging the inside of my eardrum like a dust storm whipping shingles on a Kansas farm-house.
My eyes are rolling around in their sockets. I’m on a mad hatter tea-cup and I am laying quieter than moss on a tree.
While the thoughts race through my head like sky rockets on the fourth of July, I think about getting up and walking. Maybe I should get some water. Late night TV anybody?
Instead I lay there, pretending the darkness before my eyes will quench the fire in my brain.
Tick Tock Tick Tock
6 hours later.
I stumble out of bed like a punch drunk fighter.
3 hours of sleep. 6 hours of silent nightmares and thoughts and fire crackers in my head.
I walk to the stairs and hold the rail.
I’m sober but couldn’t pass a DUI check point.
Sure hope there isn’t one in the kitchen.
I make coffee but the aroma does nothing. It’s like trying to knock on a door with a feather.
I will zombie my way through the morning.
My head is heavy like lead. My thoughts cluttered with mustard. I’m numb and my ears stuffed with grog.
I will try to pull back the blanket that envelopes my mind, but I never will fully wake up.
I am under water trying to hear a concert. My thoughts are condensed and my eyes smeared with butter.
Nothing is clear and the day essentially lost.
Stay awake and don’t drive into the guy in front of you.
That is my only goal. Get through the day, be so exhausted that you sleep tonight.
And that is the goal now. Take this exhaustion and use it like a battering ram to force me to be unconscious tonight.
When the night won’t end and your own thoughts are your worst enemy; that’s crazy.
Life’s Crazy™