What keeps you up at night?

Since that's not a 'who' in the question, I guess I can avoid all of that for now?

For lots of pieces of time now, all pressed together and meeting in odd places, I've been a light sleeper. Nearly everything is a product of their environment, and I'm not expecting me to be any different. It doesn't take much to wake me up, and it takes even less to keep me from getting there at all.

My own thoughts are plenty busy enough for that. They're loud. I don't really have a lot of words for how they sound, or the echo that comes after. They are just loud. And it isn't when the click ever comes, so it isn't as if all the not sleeping and thinking and thoughts and restlessness ever go anywhere, but circles.

You have to be standing up for the click. You've got to be facing things, and they have to be facing you back. You've got to earn the click.

It used to be that the thoughts that kept me up at night were clearer. Perfectly detailed pictures of my past, the lines cut so deep that there wasn't ever really that much variation. Some things just don't get changed. So I'd just live through them, again and again and again. And really, I guess I didn't mind not sleeping then. Those thoughts always seemed to bleed into when I slept.

Now it's...less clear. Now it's vague ideas and wonderings that keep me awake, a choose your own adventure where all the possibilities haven't been written yet. And I can say from experience that those thoughts are even louder. They tease more, they expect more from you. They promise things, only they can't really ever mean anything still. You're not standing up. You're not facing them down.

That's not how it happens.

No thank you.

It's a stupid meme, and I'm not doing it.