Somniphobia

Somniphobia

Okay, this is not just crazy.

This is also simply impractical. This is not realistic at all. They don’t perform appendix surgeries on conscious people. I will have to be put to sleep, like everybody else. I’m in pain. I don’t know what hurts more — the inflamed appendix in my stomach or the realization that I will, in fact, have to be put to sleep.

I haven’t slept for a while now. Well, I had, of course, otherwise I would already be dead. Enough alcohol, sometimes some Xanax, sometimes both, and something else on top of that can do magic. Wicked magic, in my case.

People crave sleep. My neighbor Jared must have been so tired that day after his Finance District job and one of his CrossFit workouts. He probably couldn’t wait to get home and shut his eyes and maybe he fell asleep before his brown hair even touched the pillow. Like the rest of his family, planning nothing but to rest soundly until the alarm clock went off.

That’s when it happened to them. That’s why it happened.

Would Jared have been able to fight off that man with a rifle if he had been awake? Could he have heard him opening the front door? Could he have stopped that crazy bastard from shooting his kids in their beds if he had stayed up a little longer, reading a book or watching TV?

And I was asleep too. Asleep two hundred meters away from a crime scene. Four dead. Asleep while the attacker escaped through my backyard. He stepped on the flower bed I’m looking at right now, rifle still in his hand. Did I even had my door locked that night? I can’t remember.

I’m not usually the kind of person who lets go of control easily. Jared didn’t strike me as one either. Yet both of us fell asleep that night and one of us never woke up. Sleeping has a 50% survival chance, if i’m counting right.

And yet tomorrow I will have to be put to sleep for a few hours, because I’m in pain and the doctor won’t operate on me wide awake. I’m panicking. I need to be vigilant. I need control. I can’t just drop out of reality like that anymore.

What if I don’t have to listen to what the doctor says? What if I do it myself? No anesthesia. A YouTube video could probably be educational enough.They have tutorials on anything these days. This is a minor surgery after all. What can be so complicated?

Okay. I’ll go to the bathroom and look for a good blade to do the job. Just let me move the curtain a bit so I can see better through the window.

You know, just in case.