I am water, I am rum. Waiting for dawn, and dawn she’ll come.

At times, I get brutal insomnia. Most of the people who claim insomnia are lying. They just can’t sleep that particular night.

I have stayed awake for weeks. Two years ago, when my mom was going downhill and the end was nigh, I slept like 4 hours between July30 and Aug10.

Only during extremely troubling or stressful times does insomnia strike me, and when it does, I become so tired that I am, essentially, insane—only I don’t feel tired.

The last time, like I mentioned, was when my mom was dying, and we were all at the hospice, and I, as the eldest, was supposed to take care of everything.

I had to book rooms for people. Call people. I was supposed to go to the funeral home and pick out an urn. I had a dozens of things to do.

I was the rock.

Instead, I bought a six pack of beer and went into the only room I booked, which was in the hospice, and drank it and cried. I had been awake for a week straight.

The walls were moving like waves.

If you haven’t hallucinated, I’m sorry. You don’t have insomnia.

Strangely, my insomnia appears to be associated with death in my family. The last time it struck me so violently was in my early teens. I was staying with my uncle in Wyoming and all of a sudden I couldn’t sleep. Day after day I stayed awake.

I wasn’t even tired.

That’s the thing about insomnia in my case. I’m not even remotely tired.

I was up for over a week and then we got a call that Grandpa Jack had been killed in a car wreck.

Now whenever I can’t sleep, I think WHO’S NEXT?

GOD PLEASE LET ME FALL ASLEEP.