Afraid of Sleeping

Unsleeping, I read about childhood forgetting, but how it is not-forgetting. It is Alice In Wonderland because we try to describe the Cheshire Cat when all we have seen is the end of his smile, disappearing. We don't know about children and memory, not much at all. We have taped together studies that we lick our fingers and stick to the door, until they dry, and fall to the floor, and end up under the refrigerator. My physical issues always get better at night. My emotional issues always get worse. I've always been that way, as long as I can remember. I am afraid at night. I say anxious, I am afraid. The fear is an egg. A round, hard, egg that wants to live with me until I do not. Always. I remember being so small, maybe eight, or nine, and lying in bed, unable to sleep, afraid. I remember in my late teens, two years straight where I regularly had insomnia so badly that I could not sleep until the tippy top of the sun's rays unfurled and like a universal hand had pressed my sleep button, I would instantly close my eyes and be out. And now, here I am, 42, often anxious, sometimes with the egg of afraid in my gut, expanding, and I wonder what came first. The chicken or the egg.