25
I wake to a sudden weight that lands on my chest. Something has sprung on me and seized me. In the darkness, I shout and push, feeling immediate resistance. Then I thrust my hands out, flinging whatever’s on me to the floor by the window. I squint and I’m sure I can make out some shadowy form. More and more, consciousness takes hold. The last tendrils of sleep lose their grip on me. All the typical rationalizations kick in and, as they kick in, whatever I’m seeing fades. A dream. A dream. A dream. So cliché, but it’s the easy out, and the simplest way to classify what happened as…
21
I wake to an exhaustion that tries to wrestle me back into sleep. Getting out of bed, I perform my morning stretches – the little I can do to get some motion into my neck and back without aggravating anything. I’m sure my body’s a minefield. Years of chronic pain, of anxiety, of obsessive introspection, has groomed my mind, and my sympathetic nervous system, to fixate on anything untoward, and then exaggerate whatever’s reported. While I’m lying on my belly, arms outstretched, and arcing my shoulders and upper torso back and forth twenty-four times, I feel if I just fall still, I’ll drop back into sleep. It’s a weird juxtaposition;…