The Edge of Madness

I groan with relief as my head crashes to the pillow. After thirty-two hours and counting, six hours of sleep glistens before me like the moon on still water. I float on the stillness, letting the calm seep into the deepest recesses of my mind. A ripple of an idea teases my repose. "Go to sleep" I warn my brain, "You've only got six hours and a million things to do." I peek at the clock and quickly shut my eyes, make that five and a half. Delirium propels the idea forward; if I had a million dollars, what would I do with it? I'd buy a house and a car right off the top. Then put the rest in the bank and live off the interest. But how will I get the million dollars in the first place? I know, if only a rich doctor would rear-end me, then I could fall out of the car crippled by whiplash. My pain and suffering would be worth a cool mill. "Ha!" says the voice in the back of my head, "if you're going to keep me up thinking about money, you should be thinking about the $150.00 you're short on the rent." If there's overtime this week that'll go on the fifteenth's check, so I'll just tell the landlady she'll get the rest then. My brakes are starting to grind so I'm going to need money for that, but if I work twenty hours over the next two weeks that should be about $500.00 extra on my check, and I still have books to buy for class. I have to go to school, otherwise I'm stuck in a dead end job for the rest of my life, always living paycheck to paycheck, waiting for the next catastrophe that will leave me on the streets! These thoughts swirl through my head stirring up other ideas, worries, fears, hopes, and dreams. I struggle to hold of on of these thoughts, gone is my peaceful lake; I'm trapped in a raging ocean, a storm of mental activity. I stare at the clock now, wide-awake, I start to toss and turn, anything to keep from watching the minutes tick by. "Please stop thinking and go to sleep," I plead with myself. I try to calm the storm by making a mental checklist of things to do: go to the Laundromat, wash my sink full of dishes, Kim and Teresa will be calling me around nine for our daily walk, then eat and shower so I can get to work by 11:30 and put in four hours of OT....Shit! I forgot to mail out my car insurance. I'll have to remember to call them sometime tomorrow to make a payment over the phone. They should be sending me money. For as long as I've paid them for nothing. It's not fair if I don't get into any accidents, I should get my money back. "STOP! If you keep thinking about this it's just gonna piss you off then you'll never get to sleep." What do other people do to fall asleep? Count sheep? Where did that expression come from anyway? If I were to see some sheep right now that I could count, then I've officially lost it. Count sheep, go to sleep. What do those two words have in common other than rhyming? Maybe that's it! Counting sheep is a metaphor for making up stupid little rhymes that will put you to sleep out of sheer boredom! I have to go to sleep / so that I can keep / a roof over my head / until I am dead. That's actually king of depressing, if that's all life is about, kill me now. I've got it! I'm going about this all wrong. I don't need sleep, I just need a gun. I can hear the reporters now "A half-crazed, sleep-deprived woman massacred a herd of sleep sheep last night, then turned the gun on herself. The details are sketchy, but it appears she was trying to count sheep and the sheep kept moving around causing her to lose count. On a happy note, she is finally getting some much needed rest."

This isn't working, my narcoleptic friend can fall asleep in the middle of a sentence. I can't shutdown after almost two days of constant running. How I envy her. Another glance at the clock shows me I'm down to four and a half hours. "This is craziness!" Frustration builds inside of me making me frantic. "How am I going to function off of four and a half hours of sleep?" "I'll be a zombie. Zombies don't do laundry or work twelve hours, they just walk around in a daze looking for brains!" What I wouldn't give for a one-track mind instead of a constant whirlpool of anxiety, pulling me down into dementia. "Go to sleep! GO to Sleep! GO TO SLEEP!" My head is screaming now. I stuff my pillow around my ears as if all the noise is outside of me, instead of inside me. This is what has happened to the people you see walking down the street mumbling to themselves, their fears consume them until, finally, reality fades away and they're a prisoner of their own minds. All of this reels through my mind, I flop over onto my back and stare at the ceiling. "I give up, I'll never rest, go ahead and put me in a straight jacket!" I never know exactly when the whirlwind drops me, teetering on the brink of insanity, into the sweet abyss of sleep.