Elusive Mask

When you need sleep the most, why is it that it is farthest away? The haunting hour has come and gone and still I find that I am tossing and turning. So what do I do? Do I drink a glass of warm milk with a dash of cinnamon? No. Do I turn on soothing music to numb my mind? No. Do I bury my face beneath the pillows and will it come to me? No. None of those. I instead find myself here, before a glowing screen, watching as my fingers fly across the keyboard and leave behind black imprints that are forever a reminder of my mind’s inability to shut down.
So many thoughts have been pouring through my mind. I have been racking my brain for the perfect Query letter for agents. The characters from my novels (Covered In Darkness and The Grim Daughter and The Coldest Moment) have come together in my head to throw a party of sorts. It’s a party I did not ask for and was apparently not invited to as the words are too garbled for me to even place them into a manuscript form at the moment. I have been ticking off moments I missed in my life and moments I wish I could visit again. Like I said, there are so many thoughts in my head.
I did, however, find my way to a large bowl of knock-off brand Frosted Flake cereal. I am fairly certain that inhaling a bowl of sugary crunchiness at this time in the morning is NOT the way to find sleep. Still, I don’t care because at this point, I do not think I am going to find sleep at all.
Sleep is an elusive mask for me. It always has been. From the time I was young, I wore the shadowy adornment mere hours a night and sometimes not at all. I love sleep as much as the next but, like a Mardi Gras mask made for someone else, sleep is the mask that does not fit me comfortably for more than a short time. I am going to attempt to harness and reign in the characters in my head and form some sort of order out of their meanderings onto a page. Perhaps fighting with them for the right to have my way will bring me the elusive mask of sleep. We shall see.