What the heck is this? It’s for week 2 of a writing challenge, 200 words each day about dreams.
Jenny had insomnia. It was infuriating – she was so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open, but as soon as her head hit the pillow, her thoughts kicked into overdrive and she was wide awake. She tried everything to go to sleep at a reasonable hour, instead of uncomfortably and hour or two before her alarm was set to go off. She tried good screen hygiene, not watching TV or using her phone or her iPad for hours before her bedtime. It didn’t help. She tried yoga, herbal teas, light evening meals instead of heavy dinners. She tried cutting caffeine out of her life entirely, with disastrous results; she fell asleep at her desk, which is not a great way to keep a job. She tried cutting sugar out of her diet, and while it did help her loose some of the jiggle in her middle, it didn’t help her sleep. She tried hypnotism with a somewhat shady therapist on Fifth Avenue for a while, too, and it did help for a little while, but gradually the time she was awake when she should have been sleeping started increasing again.
She missed dreams the most. One day, she told the shady therapist this, so when he put her under, he would ask her to imagine having the dreams she was missing. She was surprised to listen to herself talk about those old dreams, most of them flying dreams. On the bus home to Squirrel Hill, she passed the Cloud Factory and imagined what it would be like to glide into Skunk Hollow and through the factory’s clouds, what it would be like to be free and happy, heart and body soaring.
Little Golden Notebook 