Insomnia: A stream-of-consciousness poem…because someone pushed me to post it, even though I feel like it’s stupid

The nightmares came again, even last night. My sister says they are a product of high blood pressure and stress. I’m not so sure.

 

I dream every night, and usually during the day, when I’m trying to nap while He is napping. It’s always bad, or nasty dreams. Usually about me being killed. Usually being attacked, stabbed or shot. I actually feel the physical pain in the dreams, and then wake up crying out either consciously, or, more often subconsciously, for help. I can’t sleep after that.

 

The only time I don’t dream is when I drown in alcohol. Then I just pass out and then, regretfully, wake up. Then I want to drink again. My family knows I have a problem. They look down on me. They don’t do a thing about it. I cry for help, and try to mend myself on my own.

 

My sister pretends to know what I’m going through. I pretend that I’m OK. She’s 21 and a college student. I’m 26 and well on my way to being a manic-depressive bipolar insomniac college student. There isn’t a day I don’t wake up wondering where my son is because of one stupid mistake, not a day goes by where I don’t wonder why I’m nothing. at my age. yet. I was smart. I was the valedictorian of my high school class, Harrah High School class of 2000, I was a Tulsa Community College Provost, I was something!

 

I am nothing.

 

I dream of being stabbed, being shot. I feel the knife pierce my skin, the bullet coming through and seeking my heart. It hurts, it bleeds, there’s nothing I can do about it. I dream of hacking up my insides, blood and guts waiting for someone to take notice and do something, and no one ever does.

 

I wait. I die.

 

 

~ by Lisa Lewis on July 23, 2008.