“When you were little, I would tell you to close your eyes and think of kitty cats and puppy dogs to get you to sleep.”

“And it would work?”

“Everytime.”

The cures to insomnia become increasingly complex with age. I stare at my dilated pupils and coal-red eyeballs. As daunting and magnetic as a vacuum, void of space and time. A pair of black holes that will pull you in then expel you out like the disposable mass of rotting organic matter that you are, only to land on your newly-fractured cranium at some random point in time, far away from the morbidity of the now. What a beautiful time, when pain consisted of scraped knees and skinned elbows on the asphalted pavement, what seemed gut-wrenchingly painful at the time but which could easily be attenuated with preservative-infused, obnoxiously colored, sticky lollipops. What, in retrospect, seems negligible, disgustingly minute pain, when compared to your current malaises.

Those demons who have seeked refuge in your already perturbed mind, indiscriminately spilling hormones into the crack and dentures of your brain, concocting a chemical disaster that brings you to this precise moment in time, staring down that bulgy-eyed creature in that rectangular piece of glass that is deceptively reflective because that creature surely could not be you. Your adrenalin levels are peaking and any semblance of having a normal day tomorrow is rapidly declining.

Tonight will be my sixth. The sixth night of tossing and turning, of cursing the powers that be and ripping my Scandinavian furniture, of skipping, rather stomping, through the infamous five stages:

Denial (“This is not happening again. Not tonight.” Arms crossed stubbornly, butting heads with the God of Sleep – or lack thereof).

Anger (“WHY won’t you just fucking let me sleep?!”)

Bargaining (“If you give me two – no, one hour of sleep, I will build a shrine in your name and place a bowl of grapes in front of it. Daily.” You add scornfully.)

Depression (Once you come to the realization that the God of Sleep is defecating on your every request or sleeping, leaving you to rot in the dead of the night)

Acceptance (You get up and stare at your deplorable state in the mirror, contemplating the use of stupor-inducing narcotics.)

Too tired to display any sign of emotion yet not tired enough to sink into that experience that seems so foreign to you. Perpetual limbo, to speak kindly of such a state. Of sinking into total oblivion, grazing cheeks with death as you enter a deeper state of unconsciousness, known to those fortunate enough to experience it as sleep. If only she would come knocking on my door to hide me beneath her cloak where my eyesight would be rendered futile as my vision would peer into infinity. See, darkness has no beginning and no end, no starting point and no finish line. If you want to peek into infinity, all this is required is an involuntary deed that you have been doing your entire life. All you must do is blink and, in that fleeting moment of darkness, you would’ve perceived the unperceivable. You would’ve perceived infinity.

For little children, those little balls of naiveté with pigtails, puddles of drool soaking their shirts and blinking eyes who are not yet aware of having experience infinity an infinite number of time, prancing kitty cats and yapping puppy dogs prove to put their busy legs and nonsense blabbering mouths to rest. Horse tranquilizers could not have been more efficient or effective. For those disenchanted with life, those whose hair is pulled back during blasphemous premarital deeds, those who no longer drool on their shirts but rather drench them in hard liquor and bile, and those who no longer suck on pacifiers for their lips have gained interest in other things, even puppy dogs threateningly bear their yellowed teeth, interspersed with goosebump-inducing growls, and kitty cats hone their claws on your cashmere couch and then whip out their daggers with arched their backs and distrusful orange-tinted eye.

Yes, us teenagers who find ourselves craving sleep to mentally eradicate, if only for a few fleeting hours, the before-mentioned traits we are most known for. Sleep is the greatest escape mechanism – if only it would come. So I sit cross-legged in front of my mirror, naked, with two palms full of Xanax and a glimmer of distrustfulness in my eyes. I’m dead sick of insomnia, sleeplessness and the likes but that’s not the start. It’s the direct result of rebellion, recklessness and remorse. Of sin, shame and sorrow.