Can’t Sleep, Clowns Will Eat Me

Thursday, April 21. 4:13 am: I generally sleep about as well as a two year old who just saw The Exorcist, and more often than not, I find myself awake late into the night unable to sleep because my mind is consumed with thoughts of “You need to obsess about your credit card debt right now until your mind has the consistency of mashed potatoes and you’ve become fully committed to changing your name and moving to Tokyo where you can disappear and remount yourself as an enthusiastic karaoke star with the singing voice of an aged monk summoning demons” or “You said that weird thing at your work event today and everybody probably thinks you’re on bath salts.” One of my greatest feats of mental acuity is finding asinine things to worry about when I’m supposed to be sleeping and having no one to talk it out with because my boyfriend falls asleep as soon as his head hits the pillow. I’ve seen bullets leave guns slower. I am envious of people who are able to sleep, because they likely do not wake up for work in the morning with a face so sallow and bloated they look like Dracula had an affair with a microwaved Marshmallow Peep and then try to cover it up with drugstore makeup that they’re sort of allergic to. I admit that I may be a little vain, as I seldom leave the house without makeup and persistently position myself in family photos to showcase all my best angles. This is due more to the fact that I broke my nose as a child after an assault from a rogue softball, and my nose is slightly crooked in a way that I am acutely aware of but likely no one else is able to see. After I broke my nose, my mom took me to Osco to fill a prescription for painkillers, and a vindictive old supermarket hag promoting Milk Chugs convinced me to accept a Dixie cup of chocolate milk and then promptly snapped a Polaroid of me with two black eyes, a jacked up nose and a diarrhea brown milk mustache while sporting voluminous bangs and a Notre Dame Starter Jacket because this was 1996. To my credit, I look extremely irritated in the picture, and I am grateful that I grew up before the advent of social media, as, were video cameras more accessible during my youth and not giant hunks of plastic you needed a golf cart to lug around, the inevitable videos of me acting out original but uninspired Harry Potter fanfiction in which I am a witty American teenager who brings levity and unadulterated sex appeal to the wizarding world would likely damage my meticulously cultivated reputation as someone who people generally do not try to avoid at parties. Now my daydreams have evolved into a more mature scenario in which I am an international jewel thief who just happens to have magical powers and is in an open marriage with both of the Weasley twins. Because I am an adult.