Today I am Writing: On Sleep Masks

I have never been a Sleep Mask kind of woman.

{Sleep Masks are for the highly maintenanced, of which somewhere I was told I should never be.}

That was until I fell into weeks upon weeks that turned into months and there I was and I just couldn't sleep. I'd go down like lightning, thinking hopefully, only to meet myself a few hours later hurtling to the surface like someone drowning in her own rest. I'd lie there then, hours, hours, thoughts like nails, driving through my head.

I have never been a Sleep Mask kind of woman, until that one day I'd lost all hope that sleep would be mine again, and decided to go militant.

It was bedtime. I put my pajamas on, limb by limb, like a suit of armor. I took up my shield, the old white noise machine stored in the closet since I moved to this place. I plugged it in near my bed, to the left.

I marched through the house then, to find my sword tucked into its storage place, an essential oil diffuser that I filled with great determination, water and lavender and cedarwood oil, and I marched it up the stairs and I placed it near my bed, to the right.

Shield in left hand, sword in right hand. Now, where was my helmet?

In my bedside table, there it was. The sleep mask labeled "Qatar Airways," maroon and gray and kept there as an "I am not a Sleep Mask kind of woman, but I will keep it just in case."

All my senses cared for then, I discovered: Sleep gradually returned.

I still wake up, but when I do I don't always know it. I lie curled there in my re-created womb. Night remains night instead of desiccated morning.

And sometimes, I open my eyes to find that the Mask has slid up so that I can see just an edge of nighttime. I watch it then, girded in the bed that holds me. And the next thing I know, what I see is morning.