I should be asleep. I should have been asleep long ago. This would be true of any week night, but it’s especially true tonight. You see, I spent the whole day lying listlessly on the couch, not well enough to get up and do anything but not sick enough to feel entitled to such laziness. It was such a waste of a day off of work (though P seemed to really enjoy the excuse to laze around with me all day). So I should have been asleep tonight of all nights because I need to rest up and be well for work tomorrow. There’s so much that needs doing.

And yet, even after lying perfectly still for what seems like an age, sleep simply will not creep in and take hold. Now, I’m not one of those people who normally falls into bed and sleeps instantly. I generally lie awake long enough to process the day’s events or imagine the possible futures of characters in books. But I almost never find myself unable to turn my brain off and sleep. Tonight, though I find myself dwelling on some of that kind of drama that no doubt lurks in the recesses of everyone’s minds, just waiting for a quiet moment to leap out of its quiet corner and grind its heals into the softest, most tender parts of the imagination.

I’m anything but a drama queen, and I lead a pretty boring life, actually. But even so, there are a couple of lurkers that seize any opportunity to make me question myself, my life, and my future. Lucky me… the last couple of days have been chalk full of these little opportunities. Most of them involve other people, so I won’t go into them here, but I’m realizing that I’ll have to work a little harder to remind myself that none of this really and truly counts as “drama” in the grand scheme of things. None of this shakes any foundations.

So rather than play conversations or events over and over in my mind, I’ll lie here with my laptop propped up on a pillow. I’ll write. I’ll consult Dr. Google to learn more about why my pulse is fast and hard even though I’ve been lying perfectly still for 3 hours. I’ll poke my nose into the social networking sites I keep up with. I might even plug in my earphones and listen to part of a book on tape. Anything but lie still in the dark.