When Dark

I wake up in the early hours and read.  I like paper, you know, real physical books.  What the trendy’s call analogue.  There is a young neighbor who used the word and mentioned while taking the trash cans back to their storage space, how he likes to listen to records, CD’s or tapes while burping his house.  He explained further, after I must have looked at him oddly, how he preferred owning physical media over streaming and airing out his home by opening the windows.  This street sidebar provided the way I like to describe rediscovering books. Having tried different ways to read when I woke; like blue light blocking readers, and various electronic reading pads and even a cell phone screen, I now prefer the analogue.  I read somewhere to get back to sleep an actual physical book is best.  Also, reading over a subject matter not too stimulating helps.  I thought reading tax law would work but I became agitated at the perceived sanctioned crookery.  

I tried heavy literature or what podcasters refer to as transformative literature, and it worked for a while.  I would get up and use the bathroom of course, then head to a chair and read a classic translated from the Russian or the Spanish.  The reading would last 20 minutes or so and I would then stumble back to bed.   This all seemed to happen between midnight and 2am.  It was nice being up at this time as things were relatively quiet with one exception, a neighbor being dropped off like clockwork at 2am.  After many weeks of doing this something new started to happen.  The eye muscles and my brain’s ability to comprehend and read without needing a rest or a reset to keep going, began to increase.  Like exercising for cardio or muscles, I was able to not only understand and enjoy the heavy stuff but enjoy it for at least an hour or more before going back to bed.  

Later, it often came back to me how I was up so early, how it felt dreamlike and still able to recall the dream and feel secretly special.  Creaking about at 1:43am ever so quietly and stopping to listen if somebody was now stirring in the home. The fun of me not moving or hardly breathing until it felt safe to shuffle along to a reading spot or use the lavatory with the door closed or nestle back into a bed. Years ago, I would have been listening to music with headphones, sneaking a snort of whiskey or a beer.  My father I learned, used to sneak ice-cream. He snuck a child into the world too, but we did not know for another 18 years. Something about sneaking in general can be fun, like finding ways to buy stuff without others knowing.  Not an honest thing to do but kind of like an honest act; some emptiness being temporarily filled. This is how it felt in these early hours.  

There was something approaching mystical about being awake in the early hours of a new day while it still felt like the previous evening, and how time seemed to stop and be a bit hazy.  I could hear well again or so it seemed.  The clock ticking, the house creaking, the sounds of flying things outside the screens and distant noises too.  The October air seemed younger, less taxed and consumed.  Any slight breeze in our neighborhood has a replenished quality to it and usually smells good. Cars and planes can be heard in the distance, with the guys who like modified mufflers for noisy attention already off the streets.  Perhaps a muffled boom sound of somebody closing a door down the road in finality against the night.  It was impossible not feel like reading was special at 3am.  As if there was nobody else doing this at the same hour or only a few souls anyway.  Unless you thought of time zones, and if anybody else in the house was lying awake listening or there were others watching your weak light from across the street through the shades. 

At some point I started to go downstairs to read on the sofa as to not bother anyone else in the home.  I would just set the book down when sleepy, with its clipped reading light and my readers on the coffee table and off I went to the sandman.  

One morning while sleeping on the sofa, I was aware of a presence.  Something or someone standing over me.  I tried to move.  It was like a paralysis.  I was aware of trying to move out of the sunken cushions of the sofa and unable to do so and could see myself standing outside of this scene looking down at my body on the sofa. I thought to move an arm or a leg, roll over or start to lift myself upright.  No go.  I put it out there to rollover onto the floor.  Still nothing. I tried to wake up and came close several times.  I felt a hand touch me and I opened my eyes and sat up.  I was alone in the dark and turned on a lamp behind the couch, relieved no limbs were numb and tingly.

"Who’s there?" 

Blurry eyed and a bit chilled, I call out again.  

"Hello."  

Nothing.  I sat on the sofa staring for who knows how long.  I looked at the stairs leading up to the second floor.  This made me think of the times the dog would suddenly stare at them as if seeing something none of us humans could.  Something on the stairs or floating above them near the high ceiling.  

I never shared this sofa thing with my family, although they had witnessed the dog part themselves.  I ended up creating a reading space in a guest room to avoid the sofa downstairs and a repeat of the paralysis sensation. I could never quite get back to sleep again like I did when I could read and fall asleep on the sofa.  I tried the guest room bed, but it was too soft, and I tried sleeping next to my wife but would always get worked up trying not to wake her and lay there staring at the ceiling. I even tried laying on the floor of a room with one pillow and told myself it would stretch my back out nice, but I only felt like an imposter. 

A few weeks later while having dinner with some friends, the subject of not being able to sleep came up.  I shared my routine, embellishing it in how I would get a lot of reading done and then fall back to sleep. Even recapped a couple big books for them. I left out the reality of not being able to sleep much after waking or not sleeping.  Also, how this cut in on my use of a CPAP machine and was the excuse I needed, if being honest, in not using it for more than a few hours. 

After the others at dinner shared how they got up at night to pee, especially if they drank before bed; my wife finally said something in contribution.  

"Honey, I forgot to bring it up, but there was a time a few weeks back, when I would go looking for you and find you on the sofa downstairs.  Me trying to wake you, and you asking me to please stop was something.  You talked in your sleep and said you needed to meet someone."

I was surprised at this revelation and a bit flush in the face.  I asked her what she did after I spoke in my sleep.

"Well, I was trying to touch your shoulder and rouse you as you seemed to stop breathing.  Eventually, I would just find you in the guest room and figured you slept better there."

Once I knew it was my wife, I could not sleep much ever again after waking.  I often laid awake if unable to read and even had a remembrance of some old friends of mine I forgot about:  Not being allowed into my parent’s room while they were still together and if I had a bad dream how I found ways to protect myself as a young boy against the night.  I would often stare at the closet doors, walls, ceiling and socks or other items on the floor; and after a while they looked to slither and move towards me.  I had two imaginary friends which were real to me.  A fox and a mouse.  They lived in my unlocked closet, and I knew they had my best interests in mind and were protectors, but I was still a little bit afraid of them.