Josh Czuba

Train your brain to think and communicate clearly.

Every night I wake up at 4:48 on the dot.I try to go back to sleep, but I can’t. I’m drenched in cold sweat. My heartbeat is loud in my ears. It’s fast and arrhythmic. I can’t get out of bed. I can’t “walk it off.” It won’t be light outside for many hours. And my legs are shaking.I’m aware this is maybe not the best way to begin a conversation, but we don’t have time.What I hold in my hand right here is a bottle of the strongest sleep medication you’ve never heard of. I just took three capsules. Before you got here. That’s a macro dose. In a tight 15-20, my eyes will shut tight and they won’t open again. I’ll return to the real world.This stuff right here is not your standard issue Ambien. I moved on from that months ago. You develop a tolerance. No, this, you won’t find at your local pharmacy. No doctor can prescribe it. Won’t be on the FDA’s radar for another 6 months. Even I don’t know what it’s made of. All I know is that it will work. Of that, I am certain. I am certain because I believe.Don’t be afraid of that word. There are worse things to fear.If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you too, might grow desperate enough to believe. In something, anything. You too might feel like a stranger to Normal people.Try telling your boss you’re pushing four hundred something nights of the same bad dream.Your work friends, your colleagues, Mom, and Dad.They say they understand, they get it, they’re here for you. But they don’t, and they’re not. How could they. They’ll say “Poor you,” and “How can we help,” and “Maybe try laying off the stimulants?” But this performance lasts only so long. Sympathy’s got a shelf life.And can you blame them, really.Even my licensed clinical therapist doesn’t know what’s wrong with me.And before you start spouting off suggestions, like meditation or yoga or medical mary jane, I’ve tried it all. Falling asleep isn’t the problem. Au contraire, doctor. Insomnia would be a relief. Normal people can wrap their brains around insomnia.But try being a grown adult male who turns into bed every evening at 9 sharp, and still wakes up exhausted. Who can’t put his socks on in the morning without trembling. Who, sure, gets seven square hours of shut eye a night but still fails to reply in a timely manner.His hands are shaking.Try going about the today in a cold sweat panic, knowing full well what’s waiting for you tonight. Try sitting through the Monday morning status meeting without peeling the skin from your hands. Whispering to yourself the daily laundry list of empty litanies.Maybe I’ll get better. Maybe tonight will be different. Things could change.But deep down, you know the truth. Nothing in this world changes.You are Who you are What you are Where you are.Wake up. Wake up. Wake up.After I absorb the medicine I’ve swallowed, I’ll shut my eyes tight and lay down in the clothes I am wearing. I will not open my eyes again. But I will be far from dead.I don’t expect you to understand. Not if you’re Normal.If that sounds like you, then I offer one warning. Once you know these things, you cannot un-know them. Your ears will hear the Music. Your eyes will see only Signs. You will never be Normal again. You’ll be like me.Consider this your disclaimer on the back of the bottle.It’s up to you, the consumer, to do what you wish.My sole hope is that you choose wisely.Then maybe you’ll wake up too.This all started maybe a year ago.I was an entry level sales rep at an up-and-coming ad agency. My task was to promote a new brand of melatonin gummies, fresh on the market. Sleep Jellies, they were called. Something silly like that. To do my job, I thought I’d try the product myself. I did this a number of times.That was my first mistake.If only I had known. There’s no use complaining now. Hindsight and spilled milk and whatnot. Water under any number of metaphorical bridges. Spare me. I used the stuff for little more than a week before the dreams began. And once they started, they did not stop.Every night, it’s the same.I am seated in a waiting room. I am waiting for something but I don’t know what. The walls are tan, yellow, or beige. Something in between. I can hear the lights above me. The room is lined wall to wall with faded leather chairs. There are two doors. One behind me, and one in front of me. I am the only one here. In the dream I need help for something urgent. If I don’t get help, I will perish. Sometimes in dreams you just know things.In this dream, I am certain something is very, very wrong. But I cannot for the life of me remember what’s wrong. That is part of the reason I’m here. To learn what’s wrong with me and get help. The room is a degree or two too hot. I am sweating, but only slightly. I’m wearing my work clothes, the clothes I wore to the office. There’s a digital clock on the wall in front of me. It always reads 4:48. No AM or PM designation. The numbers do not change, but it makes a ticking sound. The clock and the lights above me. These are the only sounds in the room.To my right, is a woman at a desk behind a screen. Her face is blurred behind the screen. I can’t tell if she’s looking at me. I stand up and go to the desk behind the screen to ask the woman why I’m here, and how long I’ve been here, and if I’ll ever be seen and helped, but before I can get the words out, she hands me a clipboard and a thick stack of forms. She tells me to sit down and fill them out. There’s a pen fixed to the clipboard by a long, umbilical chain of metal spheres. I sit back down in a faded leather chair, and in the very same moment, I hear the rotary telephone cry out somewhere behind the screen. The woman rises to soothe it. I don’t see where she goes. The phone keeps ringing. The woman never comes back.I am alone in the room. The clock does not change. Nothing ever changes.In most Normal people’s dreams, time follows a loose set of guidelines. Hours go by unnoticed. But in my dream, I feel every second. Every tick of that great, unchanging clock on the wall in front of me. The door in front of me stands as tall as two of me. It’s made of steel the same color as the walls so it blends right in. It’s got a lever handle in the shape of an L, the kind that turns down to ninety degrees before it opens. If someone comes for me they will pass through this door in front of me. In the dream I know this.I sit there waiting.I tell myself it can’t be much longer before someone comes. I think, Maybe I’ll flip through a magazine while I wait. But there are none to read. I stand up to pace the room and then sit down again. No one comes in.The telephone is ringing. The lights are singing. Their bulbs are out of key.It must be an hour or two of waiting before I stand up to leave. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’ll come back another time. Whatever my problem is, I’ll live with it. I walk over to the door behind me. The door behind me is shorter than I am. I’d have to crouch to get out. It’s a wooden door painted yellow, and the paint is peeling. Its knob is round and brass. There’s a sign on the door that reads: THIS IS NOT AN EXIT. I put both hands on the doorknob. My hands are shaking. It occurs to me I have no earthly clue what’s waiting behind this door. I look at the sign again. It reads, clear as day, DO NOT OPEN DOOR OR ALARM WILL SOUND. I turn the handle to see if the door is locked. The knob turns with me. I could push slightly and the door would open. I could leave. I could walk right out. I look at the sign and the sign reads, clear as day, WRONG WAY, TURN BACK. It occurs to me if I walk through this door, I will be going the WRONG WAY. I will be going against the clear as day directions of the sign. Something bad will happen. In the dream I know this.I sit back down in a faded leather chair. Always there is the hum or whine or scream of the overhead fluorescent lights. I cover my ears with my hands. The hum is the same as it was before. Nothing changes. But it is this very absence of change that makes the sound deafening. The sameness itself becomes the killing thing. I stand up again. I cannot bear to sit. I pace the room with my ears in my hands. My clothes smell and feel three days old. They are not soiled. But they are stale, tired, spent. They itch. I unbutton and remove my shirt and then my pants and then my briefs and then stand there in the waiting room, naked.Somehow I am still too hot.It is at this point I might break into a fit of hopeless tears if it were not for the sudden click clack of a woman’s heels resounding from behind the second door. The door in front of me. The clicks are slow and measured. The clacks follow close behind. It’s louder than you’re imagining. Dial it up a notch. The sound is getting closer. The door could open any moment.I am now confronted by an altogether different fear. Here I am, naked, splayed, in a public place where I should not be naked and splayed. We’ve all had this dream.Why is it we only come to our senses when its already too late?I scramble to re-dress myself. Briefs, pants, belt, shirt. My hands are shaking. In the frenzy, I never pause to consider why the click clack of heels rings out so very loud and clear from behind the closed, locked steel door in front of me. The heels are now so close their sound might be coming from within my body. This cannot be the case. But in dreams you write these things off. You let details fade from view. It’s only later on the pieces come together.When I get my clothes back on I sit down in the chair I’ve been waiting in. The click clacks are right in front of my nose. I cross one leg over the other. I un-cross it. I place both my hands flat on my thighs and wait. It occurs to me the sound of the heels has stopped but the door has not been opened. I am possessed by the distinct sense that whatever I’ve been waiting for is, in fact, waiting for me behind that door. The music of the overhead lights has either cut out completely or I have simply stopped hearing it. Now the dream is silent.I am waiting for the door to open.T