12
I wake to somebody bouncing on my bed by my right ear – I hear the springs of the mattress recoil; feel the depression of the mattress; and am startled by the unexpectedness of it all. They bounce again around the middle of the bed, and one final time at the end of the bed, like they’re working their way down a hopscotch grid. And that’s it. Done. It happens in the time it takes me to wake, so I’m playing catch-up on processing all this. “Who’s there?” I bark. There’s no response. I see nothing. But my heart thumps. It’s night – early morning. Who the hell would bounce…
02
I lie in bed and feel not only the absence of tiredness, but a seething restlessness. That was something I must’ve felt on some level as a kid. My mum would push the drawers up against the bed because I had a tendency to roll out. But I grew out of it. As a teen, I slept okay most of the time. At thirty, a psychiatrist prescribed me Aropax (aka Paxil) for panic attacks, OCD, and depression. The start-up side effects were debilitating – dizziness, disorientation, stomach aches, insomnia, hot flushes, among other things. Eventually, some of those side effects settled. Some of them. But the Aropax did it’s job…