Sleepless

This is not my normal insomnia, in which I am tired but something will not allow me to settle, and I spur myself on until I am utterly exhausted and collapse on the bed. No, I am wide awake, and it is now 9AM. My man has woken up and is now in the shower, preparing for the new day. My insomnia normally afflicts me in times of depression, when I lay about all day and do nothing, I find my sloth has lead to a guilt that keeps me awake. Yesterday was a good day, though - I was busy and did quite a bit around the house, took a nice walk to the store in the rain, and didn't spend a lot of time larking about on the computer. When I lay down to go to sleep, I found my eyes open and my body restless. I read for a while, got up and fixed myself a snack, read some more, then gave up at about 7AM or so and got on the computer to check the morning news. It is 9AM as I write this.

There's only two things I can think of that are keeping me so buzzed. The first is that I had some coffee earlier, and though caffeine used to have no effect on me, I have been unintentionally avoiding it for quite a long time. However, this was just a coffee-flavored beverage, really - a frappuccino from Starbucks hardly qualifies as real coffee, and on top of that I finished it off at 4:30PM.

The second and more likely cause is that earlier David Bowie's 'Five Years' came up on my iPod as I was walking home, and I was struck with a memory I never experienced myself. It was a story told to me by my mother and sister after my father died. They visited him in the nursing home he would eventually die in, and brought with them a CD player and a copy of 'The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust'. My father, mostly incoherent and unable to remember much of anything at the time, bobbed his head along with the rhythm and even tried to sing along, though he garbled the words a bit. I can see it, hear it as if I had been in the room with them, picture the pained look on my father's face as he tried so hard to sing along -

'And all the fat, skinny people
And all the tall, short people
And all the nobody people
And all the somebody people
I never thought I'd need so
many
people'

I see him in a hospital gown, the kind that ties in the back - it is a light blue and patterned in little clusters of four dark-red circles that form the corners of a square turned onto its side. Only one tube coming out of his arm this time. He is whithered and shrunken, as he was the last time I saw him. He is in bed, but the bed is tilted to an angle closer to sitting than laying down. A thin blanket a dustier shade of blue than the hospital gown covers his legs, along with a white sheet. He is not wearing his glasses, and his hair seems so thin. His hands form loose fists, and he looks on the verge of tears. Though he can't quite make the right words, he sings along with passion. I have been haunted by this image, the sound of my father's voice as he sang for the last time. He sang for the last time, and I wasn't even there to hear him.

I resolved to write about his illness and death, perhaps as a semi-autobiographical work with names and situations changed to protect the innocent participants and bystanders in my life. Besides, it would have to be fictionalized, because even if my mother or sister told me I had gotten the scene I described above wrong, I would have to put it down as I see it. Sometimes here I will fabricate something entirely because it helps.

2/28/2006, 3AM: I wake up sick. I stumble, still half-asleep to the bathroom. As I am violently ridding myself of the offending toxin, I hear my phone ring. I only halfway register it. Once it stops ringing I realize that there is only one reason someone would call me so damn late, and I check the message. A voice I do not know says, "This is the nursing home, please call us back right away." I already know what happened, and it is confirmed when I call the unfamiliar voice back. Seven years from now, when he loses his mother, he will think of all the times he told people they had lost their mother, their father, their daughter or son. Maybe he thinks of this call. I call my mother, who has already spoken to them. We sob incoherently together.

My boyfriend at that time holds me and strokes my hair, saying nothing, which is exactly what I need. A few months from tonight I will leave him though he's done me no wrong, but tonight I can't even fathom that possibility. After he goes back to bed, I play Katamari Damacy in the living room and cry. Sometimes I can do nothing but cry. I call in to work, tell them I won't be there. In less than a year, they will fire me for missing so much work, but I don't care right now.

Coming back to the here and now, I am approaching 33 hours awake. I have come back to this story bit by bit throughout my day, adding a little here, changing a bit there. I have yet to have the urge to sleep, yet I know I ought to. I will wait for my man to come home from work. I will have a lovely dinner ready for him, and he will smile. But first I know I have to finish this story. How will I know when it has ended, or what it will be called? When I first started typing, I called it 'Sleepless', just to give the computer something to remember it by, a mnemonic device that is not its true name. I will find it and the end of my story somewhere along the day, which flows past like a swift-moving river, and I hardly noticing. My internet connection has been shoddy all day, and earlier, my keyboard broke. Perhaps my computer is telling me something. But no, no, I am not yet finished and I must not, I cannot stop.

It is evening, it is 7:30PM and the rain has stopped for now. Earlier the sky lamented and tore itself apart, but now it is only gray. Earlier, as I was facing the morning, the bugs buzzed in their trees, dry and active. Buzz buzz bugs, buzz bugs buzz bugs bugs. Now they are too damp to sing their one-note mating song, they've had their desires doused via downpour.

I left this post as it was months ago as a draft, and now I will publish it as 'Sleepless', despite the fact that the title doesn't quite fit.