I can’t sleep. I hear strange sounds in my room everyday. Sometimes I think someone’s in the room with me. Everything makes strange noises: the floors, the walls; when the heat kicks in, sometimes the heaters sound like they are going to burst. My imagination goes wild and I imagine that because they have not been cleaned in a while, all that accumulated dust is going to catch fire and burn me alive. Yesterday the walls were making sounds as though something was crawling in them. Why must a wall make that much sound? And then there are the sirens….the ambulance and police sirens are constant. They go off on a daily and nightly basis. How can there always be an emergency in this city? And the nightly ones happen at the same hour. Everyday.
My
room is hot and cold. I cover myself with sheets, it’s too cold. With my
blankets, it’s too hot. My pillows are too soft. I hate soft pillows. I need to
sleep on something firm and sturdy. I lay my head on the mattress instead. My
neck is sore in the morning.
I
don’t know when I last had a good night sleep. I sleep late because I can’t
sleep early. I’m always waking up, wondering if someone’s in my room because of
all these strange sounds that I hear.
In
the day time, the sounds of construction, of metal hitting metal, of trucks and
cars moving fill the air. It isn’t as bad then, except in the mornings when I
am sleeping. The construction workers start their work early. I don’t know how
many hours of sleep I actually get, hence why I nap during the day. I feel less
tense during the day. At night, my mind is hyper-vigilant.
I
have to relax, I know. I have to stop sleeping so late, stop being so tense.
Everything is fine of course. If I pay attention, the same noises that occur at
night, occur during the day. The same weird crawling in the walls, and the
wooden floors stretching, and the random sounds that also occur within this
apartment.
