Yawn
-
Grace Maher, Grade 11
-
Short Story
-
2013
Do other people fear sleep? The break in consciousness-the complete vulnerability of it. The way that in exchange for those precious few hours of rest, you lose control of your thoughts and become victim to the horrendous imaginings of your perfidiously disloyal mind. Re-living repeatedly against your will the most traumatic of childhood memories. Again and again until the pain becomes unbearable and you do anything to procrastinate the act of falling asleep.
Sleeping pills? How ridiculous. To willingly submit to the darkness- to allow yourself to be overcome by the mercilessness nature of the drug- held fast by iron chains, forcing the sleep upon you, with no guarantee that you will have the strength to pull yourself out of the coercive trance.
Ever since birth, sleep has eluded me- never allowing more than a few restless hours per week. As a child my mother gave up entirely on trying to rock me to sleep, and succumbed to allowing me to sit awake, playing with the various toys littered across the floor.
I’ve always been allusive in acknowledging my insomnia. Even the word – insomnia- fills me with dread. I feel that giving it a name acknowledges there’s a problem, and in no way do I want to do that. So through life I go, in this trance-like state, becoming used to the slower pace at which my mind works, and finding comfort in a dozen mugs of coffee per day.
Despite my mollified resignation to my sleepy way of life, I find myself almost subconsciously searching, yearning, for something to change the way I am. To open (or perhaps close) my eyes to a new way of life.
Maybe I will find that something, or maybe I won’t, but until then, Goodnight.