I can’t sleep. I haven’t really slept in over ten years. I couldn’t sleep when I was a kid either but I could at least sleep better than I do now!

This is what I have to do to sedate myself:

Thirty minutes before I go to sleep I drink a cup of warm water mixed with a tablespoon of magnesium citrate powder. Then I pop a freakin melatonin tablet. I read until my eyelids feel like lead, and then I put on music without words, and I turn it way the heck down until it is barely audible. And then I put on a sleep mask and lie on my back beneath a thick comforter with my arms in an X shape.

I never just fall asleep. I can’t do it! I have to make a conscious effort to sleep, or else I’ll just lie there in the dark all night long. So on my back with my eyes blackened out and with my arms in an X shape I shut off my brain and focus on forcing my body to shut down too.

If I’m lucky, I’ll plunge down into that dark dark place inside my head, a billion miles away from the whole dang universe . . . and then it’s off to Nightmare World!!!

Most of my dreams are about me walking alone at night. Very rarely I’ll dream about the one and only Girl I Used To Love™, and we’ll just be sitting in bed talking or something. Isn’t that nice?? That’s maybe the only good dream I have ever. The rest are dark and lonely and surreal . . . just like my waking life~!!

I usually wake up gasping or involuntarily groaning. I’ll say to myself aloud in my perfectly dark bedroom: “This again, huh,” or “Oh, God. Why?!” (lol)

Sometimes when I’m brushing my teeth or taking a piss or whatever, I’ll hallucinate what appears to be a spider on the wall—or I’ll see shadows at the corners of my vision!

Time to call a doctor!!!