Insomniac.

Not many things will suck the life out of you faster than a vampire in a "B" movie. Though, a two year-old on a rampage, a boss in full-blown menopause, working the night shift, and laying in bed wide awake when you are desperate for sleep do come to mind. You start the whole mess by trying to force yourself to relax. You must empty your mind of all thought...though you will soon think you are going mad trying to do it.

It doesn't help to cover up the neon digits of the alarm clock. The numbers march on relentlessly as you lay there realizing you are still awake. There is a good chance that after an hour or more of trying to 'relax' you are now more tense than you have been throughout much of the day. Do you have a partner in bed beside you adding to the mounting mental friction with deep sonorous snores? You feel the resentment creeping in though you try to deny it access to your fragile emotions. Perhaps the neighbor's dog is barking across the way. Is there a branch tick-ticking against the glass of the window? Is the wind lifting a stray piece of siding so that it creaks and groans in a discordant rhythm? Maybe there's a cricket chirping monotonously and endlessly in the hedge below. They are always the ones that are too desperate for a mate to pause in their plaintive cries to listen for a response. It grows to a shriek while you try to tune it out.

You turn on the nightlight and try to read your novel. You're exhausted, eyes are getting grainy, spouse is snoring endlessly, and you nudge them into a roll in hopes of cutting the sound off. You stare, gritty-eyed, at the extra feather pillow between you and picture it muffling the sound. All by itself of course. You roll over, toss your book, and turn the light off. You switch positions, turn this way and that. Jam the pillow between your knees while on your side, stick one foot out, twist over the other way. By all means, adjust the pillow a few more times. Flip it over to try to get a cool side, or a steeper angle again. You'll do this at least a hundred times yet. Against your better judgement, you peek at the clock. It confirms your fears, in fact, it's worse than you thought. Now it's too late to take your sleeping pill. There aren't enough hours left to come out from underneath it. You know it's about to go from bad to worse.

Try counting. Lose track around fifty and start again. You get bored. The three lines of that stupid song you heard on the radio and hate, is playing itself like a broken record, over and over in your mind. You start to clench your jaw. The numbers on the clock march relentlessly forward almost audibly. You start the inevitable countdown. The kids will be up in 'x' hours...the alarm is going to go off in 'x' minutes...I have a high-pressure sales day tomorrow, without a break...I have company coming and will not get a chance to catnap. I have three children under the age of three. If you start the checklists for any of these activities, you're done. You turn on the nightlight again, grab a pen and paper and try to empty your head of your 'things to remember that I need to not think about right now' list onto paper. After purging with illegible chicken scratch the life threatening things you need to remember, (take out garbage, cancel hair appointment, Remember power point brochures, buy milk and diapers), you shut the light off again. You are sure that now you will find the rest you so desperately seek.

You feel yourself begin to drift off. Your body relaxes and your breathing finds a comfortable rhythm. That's when you start to itch. It's just one wayward spot on your left thigh, you figure you can ignore it. Pretty soon it's a full-blown attack of fire-ants just because you are trying to will it away. Your whole world revolves around that one tiny spot the size of a pinprick. You give up and scratch. You're wonderfully awake again. It's too hot. You turn on the fan. Get back in bed. There's light seeping in the room through a hole in the blind. You find a sock to prop against it. You're thirsty. You get a drink of water. Back in bed you find one word repeating in your head like you're trying to memorize it for a new identity. Now you have to pee.

Your partner is still snoring. You're ready to take out your .22 gauge shotgun and find the cricket. The dog has stopped barking, but there's a cat in heat somewhere. You stuff in earplugs. Now you feel as though you are underwater. You are getting hungry. After a bowl of cereal and checking your email, you head back to bed. The rumpled sheets mock you. Your pajamas are all twisty and irritating. You get up to have a hot shower. There's a bug in the bathtub.

Heading back to bed you wonder if it's possible you are actually asleep and this is an elaborate and tormenting nightmare. You pinch yourself. It hurts. The throbbing in your arm becomes another focal point. You flip over to the foot of the bed to escape the echoing snores directly in your ear. Your spouse's feet are eight inches from your nose, and those toenails look deadly. You picture that emergency room visit and roll over. You try singing all the words to a song. You don't know all the words to a song. You feel like an idiot. The same three lines to the one song you hate are still playing over and over in your feverish brain.

Now you see the dawn lightening the room from shades of black to grey. The furniture is becoming more than just black shapes to trip over. The alarm starts bleating from under it's pile of t-shirts. Your spouse groggily hits the snooze, once, twice, three times. You are quietly weeping. The baby slept all night for once. You did not. Your day is about to begin. You are about to experience the life of a zombie for the next twelve hours. Maybe you'll be so exhausted by tonight you will sleep like a rock. The baby won't. Good luck...