I Can't Sleep

~*~

It’s hard to admit when my lack of sleep is my own fault. So often, it’s easy to just point blame at my sickness or my body or any of countless outside influences, such as the human space-heater who sleeps next to me every night. But sometimes, I know that it’s completely me, my brain, and my unwillingness to just let everything go that keeps me tossing and turning. Tonight is one of those nights.

True, Anon is particularly warm next to me tonight, and the wind is noisy, and the room feels clammy with the first rain of autumn still fresh on the earth outside. But what’s swirling around in my head is a restlessness. I feel unsettled, like there is something I should be doing, somewhere I should be going. It’s a stir crazy sort of feeling. Like I’ve suddenly realized I’m caged and need to escape. Now.

I know that doesn’t make any sense in a lot of ways, but it makes sense in one. I know I am running out of of time. I am finite, limited, and even sleeping right now feels like a waste. There’s some other way I could be living my life to the fullest right now. Before it’s too late. Sure I could try to let that go and sleep, it would be the smartest thing I could do. But I’m not always the smartest mare, and tonight I’m okay with that.

So, yeah, it’s definitely my own fault this time.

Feeling that, at this point, I’d better do something productive or else I’ll never feel like I have earned my rest, I carefully sit up in bed. Anon worries about me when I don’t sleep, and the last thing I want to do is jeopardize his health as well as mine by keeping him up all night. So, I move very slowly as I shift away from his curled, welcoming, but practically roasting back, and slide my hooves to the floor.

I can practically hear my joints creaking from tiredness and degradation as I ease my weight down, and the restless feeling in me grows with the sensation. Not sure what I’ll be doing tonight, but I’ve got to do something. I pause for a moment to see if Anon is shifting in his sleep, but he stays motionless.

The breeze from the open window sweeps in, and now that I’m no longer guarded by blankets, I shiver from it. It’s not super cold, but enough that I wouldn’t mind some small protection from the elements. Especially for my softer bits. I scan the floor and grab the first thing I see, hoping it’s a shirt or something of Anon’s I can wear. Instead it’s… boxers.

Well. Okay. Not what I wanted but it could still probably do the trick. I give a quick sniff test and find them… unobjectionable at least. I carefully step through the legs with the boxers facing backwards so that I can slip my tail through the hole where Anon’s dick would usually go. It works well enough, but I know he’d probably laugh at me for it, and never let me live it down. Luckily, as I again look over my shoulder at him, I find that his position hasn’t changed.

With a silent sigh of relief, I move deftly towards the bedroom door, open it gingerly, then close it with a very soft ‘click’ behind me.

“Sleep well, my love,” I whisper with a smirk to the crack of the closed door.

Say what you like about this wonky body, but at least it still knows how to move in stealth mode. I can at least be a little proud of that.

Letting my shoulders achingly relax, I walk more normally out to the dark kitchen. I know how sensitive Anon is to light, so I only leave one living room lamp on as I pull up a chair to the kitchen counter and stare down at a pad of paper left there from the day before. I’d been making a grocery list, but now I feel like a different list is appropriate. A to-do list of grander proportions. I can manage that this evening, and maybe that will satisfy my wanderlust.

As I pick up the pencil I’d left there from before, the ideas come forward easily. I want to go back to the zoo, make sure my will contains some money for the bat exhibit and the otters. I want to visit a few other countries, if I can afford it. See some of the sights in Saddle Arabia, tour the ancient palaces in South Americanter, have stinky cheese in Prance. I want to learn to play the Violin again, just enough to play a select few classical songs I fell in love with during childhood, and have since forgotten how to play. I want to dye my mane a bright color. What’s the worst that could happen, someone won’t hire me? That’s already a problem with how many sick days I’m forced to take, so that would be nothing new.

Over and over again, my pencil moves. Line after line sprawls out ahead of me like a winding road map to parts of me I think I had forgotten. In the low light I spin near-impossible wishes into a long tapestry of things I know I may never be able to grasp. Writing them down at first feels nice, right even. Like this is something I should have done a long time ago. But then…

I pause for a moment. With my inertia gone, I'm suddenly I’m hit with a sucker punch of feelings.

“There’s… too much,” I say at last in a forlorn murmur. “There’s just too much.”

I stare down at the paper in muted horror. I haven’t even written down anything about starting a family, which I know is impossible now. I haven’t mentioned creating some piece of art that will outlive me in fame, give me my only possible immortality. There are still more things I want, and even just looking at the tangible ones, I suddenly feel overwhelmed.

This was a mistake. I collected bricks and built a structure in front of me that I thought would be a bridge, but now I see it’s just a wall.

Another fucking stupid mistake, trying to make myself something I can hold in my hooves that validates my existence and struggle. Now I just feel… hopeless. There isn't enough time. Why try? Why give myself goals I’ll never achieve? Why fight for anything other than what I have right now?

I like what I have now so… why does this feel so much like a loss?

“Damn it,” I whisper at the paper. Then, all at once, far too forcefully, I bang my hoof down hard against the paper on the counter. “DAMN IT.”

As if somehow sensing my impotent rage, the lamp in the living room makes a strange buzzing noise, then an abrupt ‘POP.’ Already filled with a small rush of adrenaline, I let out a tiny, dog-like yelp at the noise, and instantly clap my hooves over my mouth as if trying to cram the sound back in. Then all at once I’m plunged into nearly complete darkness, with the oven clock the only light nearby.

Well fuck. Thanks for that, lamp. Definitely the kind of comfort I needed right now.

My eyes slowly begin to adjust to the darkness a little, and I can sort of make out the shapes of the counter, my own forelegs, the oven, sink, and other silhouettes in the kitchen. My breathing is still loud, and it sounds even louder still for some reason now that there’s darkness around me.

“Damn it,” I say once more, to the darkness this time

I stand up to feel along the counters, searching for a drawer I have not opened since the last power outage. My hooves fumble with the handle when I find it, but as I reach in I easily locate the tall thick red candle I keep in there for special occasions or emergencies. I feel a brief tightening of relief in my chest. I’m not exactly afraid of the dark, but for some reason this time it felt almost… oppressive. Definitely just my mind playing tricks on me.

It’s the work of only a moment more to find the book of matches, strike one, and light the candle. I cup my hoof to the side of the flame as it flickers, then grows as the wax near the top begins to turn into semi-transparent liquid. The flame isn’t very bright, but it’s enough that I can see a little better, and I hold it up as I look around. Now, maybe get to a different lamp or…

I let out a sudden muffled cry of pain and almost drop the candle in my hooves. I look down to see a line of wax dripping down from the outside and pooling where my fur meets the base of the candle. Okay, change of plans, find something to put this in first, then turn on at least one other light.

Being careful not to tilt the candle too much, I pull open other drawers and open other cabinets, but I seem to have no candle holders anywhere anymore. I could have sworn I had some, but nope! No luck. Maybe I regifted them or something when I was short on cash, but either way I curse myself for my short-sightedness and then look for something, anything I can put this damn candle in. I could really use a break right now, oh powers that be. Something, anything would be great right about now.

Much to my surprise, and perhaps in answer to my sarcastic prayer, as I reach into the back of a cupboard, my hoof meets cool, sloping glass that some primal part of my brain instantly recognizes. That’s… a wine bottle?

Almost reverently, I pull the object out of the back and look at it in the low light. Yep, that’s a bottle of cabernet, at least eight years old by the look of it. I must have missed it when I purged the place of booze a few years back, trying to cut out my favorite vice entirely to give myself as much time as possible. The voice in the back of my head, usually silent, pipes up loudly in a cry for glasses, cheese, bread, a warm bath, and a bottle of wine to drink completely in the next hour. My mouth salivates just from the thought, and I swallow hard to try to silence it, but it persists.

It's been so long since they've spoken to me, but I still recognize the sound of their voices. If temptation, lies, and seduction had a single voice, this is what it would be. And right now it's saying one word: Drink.

“Shut up,” I hiss out loud at the voices. “I don’t drink anymore.”

But you could. After all, what are you saving yourself from? You’re dying, Berry. Live a little in the meantime, that was the whole point of the list, right? That you didn’t want to waste time? Well, this solves both your problems, doesn’t it? It shortens the wait time, and it lets you have fun. Life should be fun, Berry. You cheated a few times in the beginning of your sobriety. Wasn’t it fun then too?

“Shut. Up.”

What’s this stuff going to do, kill you? It’s already done that, right? You know what they say, if you can’t beat ‘em…

I stand very still, not caring as another spike of pain rolls across my clenched hoof from dripping wax. I can’t hear my breath now. I can’t hear anything now. All I can feel is that hopelessness. That resignation. That feeling of being stuck, restless, unable to do anything productive, that time is ticking away. Faster. And faster still. I shouldn’t even be here now. And that wine… it’s even a good year.

Maybe. Just a sip. A glass. Half a bottle.

Maybe it’s okay just this once.

Maybe…

I slowly move to the drawer next to the sink, and fish out a corkscrew. With trembling hooves, I insert the tip into the cork, turn it, enjoying far too much the squeak it makes as it inches deeper and deeper. I pull the cork back and feel a tingling up my neck at the sound the cork makes as it pops free. Then, there’s the deep, oaky wood smell, the tartness of the fruit, the mustiness of the tannins. I can hear the wine moving inside the bottle, as if it’s magically alive.

Then, I turn mechanically a little to the left, lift the bottle of wine, and pour it into the sink.

I feel a voice in my throat and mind screaming at me, but the sound of the liquid rushing against the drain is louder. It feels like I’d had a knife stabbed in somewhere near my diaphragm, and with each glug that gushes out, it pulls back a little more. It hurts but I know that in a few more moments, I’ll be free.

After what feels like hours, the wine stops flowing, and the soft pat of drips hitting the sink cease. I know I’ve done something right here. Maybe even something brave. Why, then, does it feel so shitty? Even if I can put the candle in the bottle, do something useful with it, why do I still feel so weak?

“Fuck you,” I say to no one in particular. Maybe to myself.

And as if in answer to my jab, I hear the creak and whine of the bedroom door opening. Then, the footfalls of what I know has to be a human.

~*~