Because nothing actually happened today worth noting

I'm trying to remember the very first thing I thought when I woke up today, though it seems like a pointless task. There is no clear demarcation between sleeping and waking. Rather, the curtain is very slowly lifted and daylight seeps into dreams to slowly expose them for what they are - fantastical meanderings of the unconscious mind.

I've never been a very good sleeper. As a matter of fact, I was born with dark circles under my eyes, already behind in sleep. Oddly, I tended to sleep well as a baby. It wasn't until my mind could conceive of monsters and evil men lurking in closets and under beds that I began to fear the night.

Though my memory is obviously hazy, for at least a year's worth of nighttimes I would slip into my parents' bedroom and shake my father awake, who would then groggily shuffle into my room while I crawled in next to my mother. I have no recollection of this pattern ending, though obviously it did. As I recall, my next fit of sleeplessness came when I was seven.

This time there was a clear reason for my fear of night. Stephen King, that year, had made his novel It into a made-for-TV movie, which I had the misfortune of watching. For months, I spent nights curled in my bed, watching the door half expecting a clown's white-gloved hands to creep around the corner. This bout of nightmarish sleeplessness ended when I was sent to a psychiatrist. It strikes me as odd, 15 years down the line, that I never pinpointed as a problem the lamp that burned night-long next to my bed - a plastic clown holding a large bunch of balloons. I'm only just now getting rid of that lamp, too.

As I grew older, my poor sleep patterns returned off and on, though not usually as the result of any fear. Physical discomfort and emotional upheaval (or what amounts to upheaval to a 17-year-old) tended to be the root of my insomnia. Entering college brought new difficulties in sleeping, though (perhaps sadly) they were not usually related to late-night studying. In addition to being an insomniac, I was also a light sleeper and an early riser. Dorm parties incurred a passive-aggressive wrath the likes of which I had never experienced.

The answer to my sleepless dreams came right before I was leaving to spend six weeks in Italy. My father had read in a travel magazine about an herbal supplement that would help regulate sleep patterns (and, thus, control the effects of jet-lag). I found myself taking a half-pill every night and enjoying the most fit rest of my life. I slept soundly, nearly dead to the world.

In a strange twist of fate, the deep slumber I've experienced in recent years has had the tendency to erase any memories of dreams. I now sleep the whole night through, though with no recollection of any flights of fancy. Gone are any recollections of bizarre nighttime adventures. A pale, lifeless light takes its place.

Except, last night I know there was something, a glimmer of a dream that I am now trying to recall. I grasped it tightly as the curtain lifted, but the daylight seeped in, and my dream receded into shadows no light can break.