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The Awful Moment When You Can’t Fall Back Asleep
Countdown to wake up.
My eyes open.
I yawn and stretch.
It feels like the middle of the night.
It looks like the middle of the night.
Dark. Quiet. Peaceful.
No birds chirping yet.
It’s definitely early. Too early to wake up.
I think I have plenty of time to get more sleep, which I certainly need.
I check the clock on my phone, and I’ve got another hour or so till the alarm is set to blast me from my slumber.
I set my phone back down and close my eyes.
“You have plenty of time to fall back asleep,” I tell myself, in hopes to forget about the time.
“One hour left…”
I can’t help it.
My mind has started a countdown.
That’s the moment.
The Awful Moment.
This is the title I’ve given it.
The moment when there’s just no hope of falling back to sleep.
The moment when your body has assumed it’s time to start the day.
The moment when your thoughts start to ramble from how much time you have left to sleep, to the long list of tasks you need to get done today, or to random times in the past when you embarrassed yourself and start to wonder if anybody else still thinks about it too. I didn’t know it was the women’s restroom! The bar used deer symbols to portray male and female, and the lighting was dark, I desperately had to pee, can’t we just forget about it?!
Anyway…
The Awful Moment.
It takes control.
There’s no turning back the clock.
Whether it comes an hour before I’m supposed to wake up, or two hours, or even in the middle of the night when I have so much time to get back to sleep and dream of a life without Awful Moments, it comes for me.
There’s not much I can do about it.
Except to roll out of bed, open my computer, and write a story about it.
But that doesn’t stop me from thinking…
If I fall asleep now, I could still get another twenty minutes.
