Sleep is a vindictive mistress. One minute she is lying in bed cuddled up to you, scratching your back, the next she is gone. You feel like there is nothing more desolate and desperate than deciding at 3:30 in the morning to give in to insomnia and get out of bed, but you do it anyway. You blink hurtfully at the kitchen light when you turn it on to make a pot of coffee, and then the fatigue that comes with insomnia sets in. But it is fatigue without that calm that sleep requires.
So you watch some early morning TV, lying on the couch in a pile of blankets. You feel invisible even to yourself. The darkness outside makes it seem like it's getting close to midnight, but you know that the sun will be rising soon, and the day already feels like it's going to be unbearably long. Maybe you try to remember when the last time was that you spoke to another person out loud. Probably it was Friday night when you went out drinking with some people from work. You wonder if it's too early to text someone for some digital company.
You check the clock in the kitchen, and it's only 5:30. Definitely too early.
It's cold outside, the New England fall has quickly turned to a brutal winter. You can feel the draft through the windows, through the blankets. Time ticks by slowly, but you've become indifferent to its passage. You half-heartedly do some work, curled up on the couch, waiting for the football games to start. When they do, they seem to last forever.
Your teams loses. Again.
At some point in the late afternoon you start to feel better. You start to wish you felt human again. For the first time in recent memory the blankets feel heavy, like they are holding you down, instead of like a comforting womb.
Without thinking about it, you work out. You pay some bills. You put away the dishes that have been sitting in the dishwasher and clean out the sink. You shower and shave and cut your hair, and when you return to the couch you feel refreshed.
You don't remember feeling that way in a long time.
Maybe you remember the incident from the night before. Maybe you wonder what would have happened to the girl if you hadn't been there, an invisible man in her all too visible world. You might hope she's OK, but probably you don't because you know she's not. She can't be. Forgiving someone who punches you in the face might be noble and romantic, but you know it's just plain stupid. There's no taking that back. You can't unfuck a pregnant woman, and while time might dry up the blood, he will never again not have ever struck her.
10PM rolls around and you feel actually tired, like you might sleep. And you do.
