SomnusNooze
Or maybe dream living? I’ve never been a morning person. Mom would drop me off at the door by my first hour seconds before the bell rang. Neighbors that I carpooled with to grade school called me Molasses. My birth certificate says Melissa. Everyone knows I will be late to EVERYTHING.
I stay up all night cleaning because that’s when energy strikes and the fog lifts. Conversely, if I choose instead to go to bed I’ll fall asleep immediately. Mornings, and just the thought of them, terrify me. No amount of sleep, hours or days, refreshes me. I used to get up at the same time 
with no alarm. Now, if I hear it, it’s like a dream fragment that I’m never sure actually happened. My dad calls me every morning to help wake me up. These conversations have the same wispy, unreal quality.
The physical act of leaving the bed while my brain is wrapped in rolls of bubble wrap is the single most difficult task I have ever faced. And I’ve had 3 hip replacements and had my first surgery at 18 months old. In fact the state of my brain when trying to wake reminds me of the last second before anesthesia steals you or the first moments it lets you go. Once I leave the bed, conversation is not an option. The words may float around in my head but they ain’t coming out. So I do the hair and makeup thing, and I’ve realized that the act of making myself look awake helps me feel normal. Not less sleepy, just human.
I would give just about anything to wake up refreshed again. To look forward to going places and seeing people. My house used to look like Halloween or Christmas threw up in here. I can’t make myself just switch out summer candles for fall. Got meat in the freezer from March – July. Yeah I know, yikes! I haven’t cooked my family a real meal in months. And I have no appetite either. Anyone else have that?
So I float thru every day in this dreamlike fog, forgetting the thought I had a second ago, practically begging doctors to find something horrible wrong with me, desperately wanting sleep and hating it with a passion, as well as a body that seems to have turned on me, trying stimulants and wake-up meds, feeling like a loser for getting to the office at 11:30, forgetting to pay bills, not going to the grocery store, being too tired to give my cat her medicine, being overrun by laundry, telling my sister no I can’t take you to urgent care, throwing my hair up in a ponytail because I’m too tired to wash it, being suspicious of “good” days and cramming a million things into them because tomorrow is an unknown bitch that more than likely will kick my ass again.
Melissa Morrow
Oak Grove, MO