slight insomnia
It’s 3:37 AM and I’m awake. But the weird thing is that my bedside alarm clock said 2:37 AM. The computer clock and the living-room clock said it was after three. I believe them more than I believe the bedroom clock, because the bedroom clock only cost a dollar. But still… now I’m confused.
Was my bedroom clock wrong yesterday, too? If so, how did I get my kids to school on time? Or did I? Maybe they got there an hour late, and so did everyone else who was getting there when we did. Maybe the school just took it and liked it, forced to constantly make allowances for the slow, one-day-behind-Daylight-Savings-Time crowd. Maybe we are a part of what represents the worst example of evolution.
No. I think what must have happened is that I woke up at 5:45 on the bedroom clock. Then I went to the bathroom and half dozed off while sitting there, like I often do in the morning. Then I walked over to wake up the kids, saw the living room clock on my way, and said, “Damn! It’s 6:45! What the hell was I doing?” Then we rushed like crazy and just barely made it to school on time.
Yes. That is what happened.
But why am I awake now? What time was it when I went to bed last night? No matter what time it looked like on the clock when I set my alarm, it was really an hour later. Can I really afford to be awake right now? What the hell am I doing?
I can’t sleep.
scary adrenalin thoughts
The other night, I dreamed of people trying to do bad things to me, and me trying to fight them off. I woke up in the proverbial cold sweat, except I wasn’t actually cold or sweaty — just breathing hard and unable to get back to sleep for a while. I was afraid to go back to sleep and dream that shit again. But I was able to do it by reminding myself of how valiantly I’d fought. A dream is like a test sometimes. If you deal with it as best you can at the time, you probably don’t have to dream the same thing again within an eight-hour night.
I wasn’t dreaming anything bad just now, I don’t think, but I woke up and imagined someone doing something bad to me. And I imagined fighting it off. And then I remembered someone trying to do that same bad thing, in that same way, and me fighting it off. In real life. (No, this is not a dramatic moment in which I recover a memory right before your eyes. This is something I’ve remembered quite well since it happened, even if I tried to live as if I’d forgotten it, in order to go on with every day life.)
Not only did I fight it off… I escaped. Not only have I moved us to someplace nice… I moved us to someplace safe. Relatively. I guess.
What if something bad happened? Thank God, I’ve never been raped. Or even mugged. But what if it happens? What will I do?
I will fight it off, if I can.
But what if I can’t? What if he has a knife, or a gun?
Then I will submit. I will blank out and submit to save my life. Afterwards, I will call the cops. I’ll have them send a woman cop.
You know how sometimes you wake up and think of stupid things… “Oh, shit, I had a dream about sharks! What will I do if a shark attacks me in real life? I know… I will swim real fast. Zzzz.” Or you think of not-stupid, not-implausible things. “What if a burglar were to come into the house right now? I would hit him with the baseball bat next to my bed. What? I still haven’t purchased that baseball bat? Note to self: go to Wal-Mart this weekend. Zzzz.”
People get raped all the time. I can’t imagine living through that and then having to think it all over again alone at night. There’s a commercial — a public service announcement — they’ve been showing about a woman who was raped in a field somewhere. I can’t imagine being her.
Ever since I heard about the POW woman, I’ve been worried about whether she was raped and how she’ll get over it.
I’m still thinking of the girl who was kidnapped (Elizabeth Smart? Is that her name?) and other girls who get kidnapped all the time, and wondering how they’ll cope for the rest of their lives.
If you are reading this and you were ever raped, I think you’re very brave just to be alive in the fucked-up world today. You are. Totally brave. I hope you’re asleep and safe tonight. I wish everybody could be asleep and safe every night.
