Awakening

There's nothing I hate more than being dragged out of a deep sleep. I hate that sick feeling my stomach turning with the confusion and trauma of suddenly having to FUNCTION. I hate the few moments of not knowing, the inability to distiguish dream from reality, and even then, once it has been established that the dream is gone, the few moments of fitting the facts together to complete the puzzle of the AWAKE.

What is going on? Can I just go back to sleep? Quick, before it's gone completely, I want to go back to my dream. Let me go. Stop shaking me. That alarm? Maybe it will just go off by itself and let me sleep. I just want to sleep. I JUST WANT TO SLEEP. Nothing else matters... Not getting to work on time, not the phone, not anything you have to tell me. A burgler can have my entire CD collection and my old laptop and the one necklace I have that's actually worth more than $5. I don't care. I'll toss in my car keys if he drives off this second and lets me sleep. If there's a fire call the fire department and they'll put it out around my sleeping body. Please, please don't make me move.

The trouble is, even if it's nothing, even if the crisis that woke me up was something as minor as my roomate not being able to locate the corkscrew, I will then be AWAKE. I will have missed the boat to slumberland. Well, I made it, but I chose to jump off. And now the captain of the sleep ship is unforgiving, and will not let me back on until I swim to shore. I am awake. I can no longer sleep. And my stupid roomate is drinking with her stupid friend in my stupid apartment and I can hear them giggling through the walls, drunk giggles about stupid, petty things, things that only seem funny at 3am when you're wasted.

God, I hate being awake.