For two weeks I’ve been going to sleep with human cells dancing through my head.

Before that it was brave African American maids, a boy locked in a cupboard, growing up poor and wild on a ranch in Arizona, hiking in the Appalachian mountains, and white women who become the wives of Indians. Oh, and I can’t forget the Muslim woman in the Dutch Parliament, ghosts in London, and escaping slaves.

I have insomnia.

I picked it up in college about the same time I picked up my red cowboy boots, and it’s never let me out of its spiky teeth. The only way I go to sleep at night is if I read and read and read, until the book thunks on my face.

After I turn off my light I have to make sure I don’t think of any of the following things: Worries, which include, but are not limited to: any aspect of my children’s lives. I can’t think of anything that might, possibly, in the most remotest of ways, happen to my children that would be scary or horrible. For example, what would I do if one of my kids got a flesh – eating worm in their bodies and the only serum that could cure them was from a purple flower that bloomed once every seven years in the middle of a war torn African battlefield? How would I get there? How would I get past the African war lords? How would I know I had the right flower? How would I get the flower back to Oregon with its life saving serum? One thought there, and I am done for. No sleep. All night.

I also refrain with all my strength worrying about: My sisters, specifically their health, often for my younger sister who has all sorts of animals, like horses, that could kick her teeth out if they so desired, which would hurt and maybe smash her nose in. Younger sister drives a tractor, (What if the tractor rolled down a hill with her in it?), mends fences (What if a wild wolf ate her while she was doing this?), and plows her way through feet of snow every winter in weather so cold it could freeze your entire face into an icicle in seconds. (What would I do if my sister turned into an icicle?)

I worry about my brother. He is a lieutenant with the fire department. What if there is a fire? What if he is riding his bike and is chased by a space alien? What if he IS a space alien? What if he won’t bake me chocolate treats anymore?

I worry that I don’t spend enough time being nice to my husband. I worry about my husband. I worry because he doesn’t exercise enough. I worry he’ll find a skinny blonde. If he found the skinny blonde and left me, I worry that I would fillet him like a flopping fish and end up in jail with a roommate named Sal who would like me in a way that I don’t like her. Orange jumpsuits are so not me, either.

I worry about my very slight case of hypochondria.  A hurting leg?  I just know the bone is cracking. A cough? I’ll be dead in two weeks. Thinning hair? I bet I have a head tumor. The tumor is probably the size of a football…no wonder my hearing is going, the tumor is coming out of my ears!  And why am I so damn fat? When did I get this fat? Will I ever be thin again? Maybe I have a fat-making disease!

I worry I’ll lose the gig I have now and I’ll have to find another job, one where I have to work from nine to five in an office with a bunch of silly women and they’ll gossip and hate me and I’ll feel insecure and like I don’t fit in.

I don’t like feeling like I don’t fit in. It’s happened a lot, but I do try to avoid it when possible, it makes my life more pleasant.

So I have to read before I go to sleep to distract myself from me. And I can’t read my work, can’t think of any draft of a book I’m writing. Oh no. Done that.  I turn off the light and lay frozen, like a non-melting popsicle, with intermittent hot flashes, worrying about every plot point in my book and why the heck did my characters do or say that, that’s not right, that’s not who they are. Do I have a brain? What if this book makes a list of Ten Most Terrible Books Ever On The Planet Earth?

I talk to my characters. They talk back. It is strange. I am strange. I am a loser writer. My leg is hurting again.  I’ll never be able to find that purple flower. Are there wild wolves in Montana who want to eat my sister?

I should try to get a real job at that pretzel place. I could eat all the pretzels I wanted. I like pretzels.

So I read at night so I do not worry.

Tonight I am reading about the Holocaust.

Pleasant dreams to you, too.

Share this: