FEAR OF DEATH/FEAR OF CONSCIOUSNESS....LIKE I'M GONNA WIN THIS BATTLE!

So, it's about 3:00 in the morning and I get this hideous gas pain in my chest...the LEFT side of my chest, no less....and I sit up in bed, moving my arms and my torso trying to make it go away. Peter asks, "What's wrong?"....I reply that I have a gas pain in my chest so "just go back to sleep"....he asks, "Do you need to get up?"

I know he's being helpful but when I wake up in the middle of the night, really...all I want to do is stay as far away from consciousness as I can....really....I don't want to talk....I don't want to move....I don't want to do anything that requires a lot of cognitive processing....because if I cross a threshold into consciousness, that's it....I'm awake...and I will remain awake until dawn....not only will I remain awake until dawn, I will remain fully awake and alert until approximately 5 minutes before the alarm goes off at which point I will be in a Stage 4, delta/theta stupor....

So, I try not to interact too much during these times...no talking....no moving....no nothing....because you see, Peter can wake up at 3:00 a.m., walk the dogs, eat a bowl of cereal, and watch a sports program and THEN lay back down on the bed and be asleep BEFORE his cute cranium actually touches the pillow....not that I'm bitter....

Anyway, I was sitting there dealing with this gas bubble behind my left breast that was approximately the size of a Buick...it hurt...meanwhile Peter got up, turned on the closet light, went into the bathroom, got a drink of water.

He gets back into bed, shuts out the light-plunging the once lit room into blackness and begins (of course) to fall into a deep slumber. I'm still sitting up with eyes closed, attempting to dislodge the gas bubble, AKA impending blood clot/embolism/clogged artery/whatever-else-can-go-wrong-scenario and I say, "Oh, that's better. I'm dealing with impending death and you plunged me into the abyss" to which he replies as he turns over, "Let me know if you need anything", only the "anything" was barely audible because he was already falling asleep. Nice.

So I thought, "What if this really was it!" I panicked because my children and friends would have to go "through my house and things" and I still had lime stains in the toilet bowl. How whacked is THAT? And then I thought of each room of the house and thought (again), "Lime stains? That's the least of my worries. My loved ones would have to traverse through mounds of clutter and debris that would make those deeply disturbed hoarder reality shows look like The Donna Reed Show...so now I have house anxiety on top of death anxiety...what's that? consciousness?...oh yea....here it is....fully awake now....hello darkness...hello night time....hello quiet....lay back, get comfy, as comfy as you can with an alien getting ready to claw and kick its way out of your rib cage just so it can mock your lack of house-cleaning skills....go ahead, I'll be here all night, right up until 5:55....and then I'll fall asleep....