Sleep

I hate the night.

The insomnia I suffer slowly crushes the soul. It is an affliction that separates its victim from the normal members of society, a reversal of existence that leads to wandering at night alone and sleeping during the day when others are interacting.

I read today that nearly a third of people in the United States are awake between midnight and sunrise. These are the men and women protecting us from harm, delivering the goods we buy, preparing morning foods, and so on. They are the swing and graveyard shift workers, the people who keep things ready for the sunrise.

But I have no such excuse. I am not employed to work at night… though you could argue that no one cares when a writer writes or a scholar reads.

I sometimes fear falling asleep. I always have, even before I began to have trouble with my eyes in the morning. It is illogical, I'm sure, but I have always worried that I might not wake. Or, if I do wake, that I will somehow have lost the ability to function.

Then, my eyes began to hurt in the mornings, the thin layers tearing slightly for reasons inexplicable to me even if medicine has a name for the condition. Doctors cannot explain why the condition exists, so having a name for it is rather pointless.

My joints hurt in the morning, and have for years. It's not much fun to wake up in pain, so the added misery of feeling like my eyes were being torn apart was too much.

What if you only turned into a monster in your sleep, during the night? What if you had to stay awake, every night, forever, or risk being something horrible and beyond your conscious control? No idea where that thought comes from, but it might have some literary purpose...