It’s four AM and I’m wide awake and I hate it. I stare at the ceiling, my vision fuzzy with little black dots, darker upon the darkness, and I remember how when I was younger, I would have night terrors where I thought those little dots were spiders coming down on gossamer webs. I’d scream and scream, my hands shielding my face, until my parents got fed up with bouncing me back and forth between their beds, trying to sooth me, and finally sent me into the living room to curl up on our green sofa and sleep.

Now I know better. Those are just dark dots, but I keep staring until they jump and jitter. Then, I finally give up and get out of bed. I go into the bathroom to pee—my pee is dark yellow from all the vitamins I take just after dinner—and I stare at my reflection in the mirror. Dark hair, dark eyes, a dimple in my chin; the whites of my eyes are that unhealthy color that comes from lack of sleep, the color just before becoming bloodshot, like boiled eggs. When you haven’t slept well for a while, you enter a state of tiredness that is so complete, it borders on wakefulness. It becomes a full circle; a tiredness that makes life even more crisp and reality even more real. I feel like if I reach out my hand and touch something, I can see the motion in crystal clarity, like bullet time in the Matrix movie.