IT'S NOT AS THOUGH I HAVE A MENTAL ILLNESS

At least I don't think it is. I don't want to be a freak. But that hardly matters to my episodes.

I only sleep about 4 hours a night. I have 2 alarms which I have placed across the room, requiring me to get up to turn them off, and there is no returning to bed. I am terrified of sleep. You see, I don't dream. Not like other people dream. What I see certainly is not real, but I can hardly tell the difference. "Experts" call it vivid dreams. I call it horrid nightmares. There is no boogeyman, no one chasing me, no dark monsters hiding in the closet or under the bed, oh I would welcome that! Yes, happy is he who dreams of such child's play.

I see tunnels. Not ordinary tunnels, but passageways. They go nowhere, but where they do go I go with them. In them. Through them. Many have colours. Many are dark and I can just make out the faint shape above me, lit by some distant light or planet. To the grounded man this would be spectacular, breathtaking, beautiful. But there is no ground beneath me on my nightly journeys. Aside from my jetting nowhere quickly through the universe my evenings are quite uneventful. But it's no casual ride. My nerves are on their very edges, my hair stands on end, I tense up with every muscle, fighting, resisting, denying my surroundings; unsuccessfully.

-Have you been to see a doctor?-

Puh-LEEZ! How can a man say he knows what's in my head? Has he been there? Has he taken the vehicle which denies my very freewill out for a spin? Has he slept the sleep with which I am greeted by every single night? My question to him is this... Are you able?

I only sleep about 4 hours a night. Perhaps I mentioned that. I cannot bear to sleep more, I cannot possibly sleep less, lo my body shall require strength of me later in the day when perhaps I would need it most. But it's not 4 hours "in the tunnel" as it were. No, not even 4 days!... Try about a month. I don't mean that I ride sliding, gliding through space and time for 30 days at a time. I usually arrive at the end of the month, but regardless, I feel the entire set of days. Sometimes its longer, sometimes much shorter. But to be quite honest, 10 minutes is more than I can bear, and yet bear it I must. This mental phenomenon has rented my mind now for the better part of 13 years. Night after night, but each morning I wake to a glorious day. A glorious day. It could be raining, it could be hot and humid. Whatever the morning brings I welcome it with unbridled enthusiasm. I made it through another night. I wonder though, I wonder if one night, some night, I won't come back, but I will ride throughout eternity, marooned. I wonder, tonight?

Or perhaps the morning will come after all. Perhaps.