I couldn’t sleep last night. That simple fact alone is not unusual though since it seems that very much beyond the waking sandy-eyed drowsiness I almost exclusively feel all hours my eyes are open has become my norm. I hate it. These days to sleep beyond 4 am is a blessing and 6 am or later would denote a present paralleling the gift of world peace at Christmas.

I used to have nightmares when I was younger, I think they started sometime in Junior High, in which my daily horrifying activity was entirely made up of just trying to stay awake. In these nightmares I would be anywhere, scenes from my normal teenage life, and I would be struggling the whole time just to function in the most basic sense of the word. I would be dragging myself around, crawling through the halls at school, slapping myself in the face, and splashing cold water everywhere as waves of sleep threatened to steal my mind from me. There were no serial killers, no ghosts, no movie monsters in my dreams, just sleep. A state of unconsciousness was constant, persistent, and my sole enemy. I still don’t know where any of these fears originated although I’m now wondering if they were some sort of premonition into my future. I had these nightmares back when I didn’t truly know what it was like to be lacking so much in the human necessity of sleep. It seems now that my mind is robbing of one basic function as I slowly rob my body of another.

I have been told that malnourishment can be a cause of sleep deprivation and I have been anorexic for about 4 years now. Last night’s lack of shuteye and my 2:30 am wakeup had more to do with anxiety than side effects of my eating disorder though. At least not direct side effects. Today, right now, I am off to treatment.

I am on a train that is taking me to the next step in my life. It boarded in Virginia and my last stop is New York’s Penn station in my attempt to take care of this issue. I am headed to Columbia University for somewhere around 3 months in as a way of trying to gain some semblance of a happily satisfying existence. This misery of control run amok has stolen too much from me. I do not want to live like this anymore. I can’t.