So it goes...

I’ve been not seriously ill, but not seriously healthy either for the past two months. Saturday night I was awake later than usual and then had a terrible time getting to sleep, even though I should have been really tired. Maybe you know this feeling: it’s like your body and mind are layered on top of one another, separated, rather than dissolving in unison (the way that I imagine is the precursor to sleep).

Every once in a while I would feel myself start to liquefy, then jerk awake—not involuntarily, but in panic. At one point, my body erupted in sweat and my head felt dizzy and peculiar. I am accustomed to feeling normal and well almost all of the time, which greatly exaggerates my sense of hysteria when I am not. So I convinced myself that I was dying and that if I did fall asleep, this would be the end of it. I would not wake. My husband would find me when he returned home in the morning, which I decided would be really horrible. So then I made a great effort not to slip into slumber, which, naturally, had the opposite effect.

I woke in the morning as I do every day, minus the occasional afternoon exception. I told Ben about it when he got home. I told him I didn’t want to die and I didn’t want him to die. And then I cried, this time because I was sad.