Dreamless Sleep (Incomplete)

Speaker never had nightmares. He couldn’t, not when he could control his own dreams. It would be silly to inflict the worst sort of horrors upon himself. He never woke up sweating, heart beating painfully fast, or paralyzed with fear. That would just be ridiculous. When he did sleep he did his best to make the dreams the best they could be but that wasn’t always easy, not when what it meant was having a few extra hours to himself to think.

Speaker never had nightmares but he had bad dreams. Dreams in which he spent too much time thinking about a future he might not be able to have, the stress of all the things he had to do for the next day, and processing the recent news about his mother’s health.

Suffice to say, he didn’t sleep well that night.

Most of the time Speaker could deal with things quite easily. Most of the time, Speaker ignored them, distracting himself with a million other things, but when he’s sleeping and his brain gives him the space and time to settle down and process things he didn’t have a choice. He couldn’t distract himself from himself when he was in himself. He’s tried. He’s tried bringing up different things to think about, tried giving his mind something else to do but his thoughts always reverted back to the same negative topics.

Speaker didn’t sleep well that night and when he awoke earlier than normal, he found that no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get back to sleep. He couldn’t get back to sleep and he definitely couldn’t stay in bed thinking about the same exact things he was when he was dreaming. So Speaker got up, got dressed, and decided to distract himself once more, hitting his morning run before sunrise, hoping it would take his mind off things.

He nearly threw up.

He’d been pushing his body further than it was used to because he just didn’t want to stop. He hadn’t stopped to stretch, didn’t bother grabbing a water bottle and he found himself bent over by a bench at the park, hands gripping the back rest of the thing as he panted heavily, tired and in pain but not thinking about the things that occupied his mind all night.