The Problem of Sight

I'm sure you know what it's like when you can't seem to fall asleep, no matter how tired you are or what medication you're on, and your brain starts racing through massive amounts of inconsequential/nonsensical information. Right?

A couple nights ago I was cursed with an acute case of insomnia. No kidding, I might have slept for a half an hour the entire night. It was horrible. I was exhausted, but I could not make myself go to sleep. I kept looking at the clock, trying to convince my brain that it was absolutely necessary. But all my brain would do was continually calculate and re-calculate how much sleep it could get were it not calculating and re-calculating how much sleep I could get.

And then I thought about my future. I thought about the exams I'd just finished. I thought about gas prices. I thought about red wine and its heart benefits. I thought about Christmas and traveling. I thought about where swear words come from. I thought about what I'd have for supper the next day (or, as it turned out, later that same day).

And then I realized something that horrified me greatly, and cemented my fate to a sleepless night: I never stop 'looking'. When I close my eyes, I'm not really shutting them off. I'm just looking at the inside of my eye lids. So no matter what I do, my eyes are always on, always seeing, never resting. How terrible.

I spent the next few hours thinking, "So this is what the inside of my eye lids look like. Huh." (And, of course, I spent the entire next day wanting to re-examine them.)