I woke up with a gasp- the way people do on TV when they’ve almost drowned and are getting CPR. \u00a0I gasped. \u00a0The sun was shining outside and I looked around the room. \u00a0I was sitting at my desk, which was cluttered with papers and wires and eyeglasses and pens. \u00a0Everything was arranged the same as it was before I woke up, which was surprising.<\/p>\n
Leaning back in my chair I could see my dog napping in a sliver of sunshine in the other room. \u00a0She sighed heavily as I watched her. \u00a0My eyes trailed slowly back to the surface of my desk, passing little balls of dust and dog hair that endlessly accumulate around the baseboards. \u00a0Being so awake felt like an ache, a too bright light. \u00a0I stood up and walked to the window.<\/p>\n
The light of the springtime sun rinsed everything on the street below me. \u00a0Sparrows and robins flitted around bare branches and cars gleamed as they wooshed by. \u00a0I noticed for the first time in four months that my head was attached to a torso with arms and legs and hands and feet. \u00a0Inside my torso my guts and blood whirred along noisily. \u00a0I gulped air into my lungs, filling them and making my heart race.<\/p>\n
As I dug my sneakers out of the closet I admitted that I recognized this feeling. \u00a0In the past it made me turn on music when I’m home alone, and buy new packets of my mechanical pencils so I can write on yellow legal pads and drive fast. \u00a0But there’s a restlessness that comes along with it too. \u00a0I’m uncomfortable being so awake. \u00a0Everything has edges, and all the edges are sharp.<\/p>\n
I have to start running once I wake up. \u00a0I run until my lungs burn and my bones clatter and then I run around the block twice more. \u00a0Sleeping at night seems like an interesting concept, but one I’m far from being able to incorporate into my own life. \u00a0I think about something until I’ve figured how I feel about it, then I think it the opposite way.<\/p>\n
Here’s the thing- I can’t stay awake very long. \u00a0Everything gets in the way. \u00a0Everybody pulls and calls and coughs and sits and rides and needs and blurs those sharp edges. \u00a0After a few hours or days or weeks or months the ache goes away. \u00a0It’s hard to notice unless something out of the ordinary happens, or you go to a museum in the middle of the day for no reason. \u00a0And blurred edges have a way of keeping you out of museums in the middle of the day. \u00a0Now I know though, after living for a little while, that I’ll wake up again. \u00a0With a gasp,\u00a0the way people do on TV when they’ve almost drowned and are getting CPR.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I woke up with a gasp- the way people do on TV when they’ve almost drowned and are getting CPR. \u00a0I gasped. \u00a0The sun was shining outside and I looked around the room. \u00a0I was sitting at my desk, which was cluttered with papers and wires and eyeglasses and pens. \u00a0Everything was arranged the same … Continue reading “When I Wake Up”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3115","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3115"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3271,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3115\/revisions\/3271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3115"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3115"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.poorluckyme.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3115"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}