02
I lie in bed and feel not only the absence of tiredness, but a seething restlessness. That was something I must’ve felt on some level as a kid. My mum would push the drawers up against the bed because I had a tendency to roll out. But I grew out of it. As a teen, I slept okay most of the time. At thirty, a psychiatrist prescribed me Aropax (aka Paxil) for panic attacks, OCD, and depression. The start-up side effects were debilitating – dizziness, disorientation, stomach aches, insomnia, hot flushes, among other things. Eventually, some of those side effects settled. Some of them. But the Aropax did it’s job…
01
Lying in bed, it’s not that I don’t feel tired, but there’s this vacuum where tiredness swirls into nothing. Strange. Getting out of bed in the mornings is like dragging myself out of a coma. Throughout the day, there’ll be occasional lapses where I feel I could fall asleep regardless of what I’m doing – working at the computer, eating lunch, or sitting in front of the television. But once I’m in bed, that tiredness, that need for sleep, evaporates. Lots of things flit through my mind. My writing. Stuff to do at work. Shit I should’ve said in arguments I’ve had. Random images. Projections of what I want for…