12.07.2004 - 3:59 p.m.

I came home relatively late last night, ten-thirty or worse. It is not unusual for me to be up at this time, but on a worknight I like to be home, not dragging myself through the last half-hour of a long drive. Such a long drive.

I undressed, brushed my teeth, and tucked myself in under the covers, but it took only a few minutes to understand that I would not be sleeping anytime soon. Too much effort propping my eyelids open on Route 4. Not tired anymore. I petted the cat and stared off into space, I got myself a drink of water, I played with the spectral images on the insides of my eyelids. No sleep. No release from a consciousness I really didn�t need until the next morning.

I poured myself a bath and then, because baths are boring, pulled a paperback down from my need-to-read-it shelf. I obviously needed a good soak and a few chapters out of a fantasy world. I read until the water cooled, then toweled off, got back in bed, and decided to finish the chapter before taking my contacts out.

I miss the dark morning hours. They were good to me in college, safe, spreading an artificial light on pastel comforters and cinderblock, existing in a slightly different reality than the days my problems lived in. Nights belonged to me, and only I existed as the dark slowly fell asleep, overtaken by false dawn, then by the real one.

At two I thought, one more chapter. At three it was just this last page. By four thirty I wondered if I could finish by dawn, and I think it was nearly six when I finally got tired, the words twirling through my field of vision, only twenty or thirty pages left. All told, I managed a little less than two hours of sleep.

So today I have been plodding through a world with that old familiar sense of imperfect reality, as if all the mitered corners have come undone, all the pieces of my body warped, all of time stretched to cross the gaps in the language. I am supposed to meet the boyfriend at the gym tonight. I am supposed to cook dinner and then muster the strength to eat it. I am supposed to be so many things I just don�t feel like entertaining right now.

More than I realized, I missed this.

-stonebridge

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