I try to get to sleep every night, just sometimes it is unreasonably difficult. I do everything in my power to drift off, weather it is turning off all my bright lights, or patiently reading a book. Long, drawn-out hours pass and I feel my eyes becoming extremely heavy, but when I close them, all I get is a miserable headache.
I look out my windoe into the sorrowful darkness and try to find the stars, hoping as I stare at them I will slip into hours of much-needed oblivion, but sleep does not prevail.
My bedroom starts to get noticeably warm, as if someone deliberately turned on my radiator knowing it is still summertime. I start to get sticky with sweat from the smothering humidity. My eyes are longing for rest and my head is pounding ferociously, which makes getting to sleep impossible. The heat takes it to the next, arduous level.
I look over at the blinding, green numbers staring at me from my alarm clock, edging me on to get to dreamland. I try to close my tired, aching eyes once again, and I keep them this way, but nothing occours. Light sources make my head throb harder, so there is no source of entertainment to pass the final hours of dreary darkness. I lay in the dark wondering and wanting to plead for sleep to do its duty.
I hear the soft pitter-patter of the rain on my outside garage's old, decrepit, tin roof. The sound is soothing, but it does not shy my unnerving migraine away. It fills my room with its telltale smell from my half-opened window.
It is hard to describe the mystical odor the rain posesses. Around here, it smells like the metallic aroma of earthworms, mud, and dead, rotting leaves. It is in a way exotic, but after a while you get used to it. Then it gets mixed with the toxic exhaust fumes from the many vehicles cruising down my lengthily street, trying to get their hasty drivers to work on-time. Large timber trucks and tractor trailers pass and fill my sacred space with the overpowering stench of diesel fuel.
Their headlights dance across the four long walls of my room like a strobe light. They are constantly flashing in my eyes. I know it is only a matter of time before I have to get up and get myself looking presentable for school, so I stare at the ceiling and think to myself of the day's future challenges and events. Before I know it, my alarm clock is shreiking its awful ring in my delicate ears, the sound and pain piercing into my brain, telling me to awaken. I get up and stretch my fatigued muscles and go on with my daily routines. I try hard not to think about the future night, knowing that I'll have to put up a torturous battle with the one thing that frightens me most of all...
Insomnia...
The sinister curse of sleep deprivation.