Every night is exactly the same and also totally unpredictable. I fall asleep suddenly and get dropped into an empty, endless space and then … nothing. I stand in that void, changeless and infinite, never knowing when I’m going to wake up again. If I’m going to ever wake up again. I always do, obviously, but when I’m in that space, it feels real. Like that’s where I live now and I’m no longer in control of waking up and going back to my actual life. Which, you can imagine, is pretty anxiety inducing!!

I don’t know why the doctors thought keeping a dream journal would help me. “Doctors.” Who am I trying to impress here? It was a high school nurse. Despite the fact that my own mother is a nurse, I went to the nurse at a school I don’t even go to anymore to talk about the fact that I’m sleeping so much—too much—but never feeling rested, my head full of strange, as-real-as-life dreams, and he suggested keeping a journal.

“It’s most likely anxiety,” he said, as I sat on the sticky plastic chair in his un-air-conditioned office.

“What?” I said, “I’m getting so anxious I’m passing out?”

This seems like a dubious diagnosis to me, but then again, my idea of medical intervention is holding up my bleeding hand until it stops and julienning single-handed so that the sous chef doesn’t yell at me.

“You’re in the workforce now,” the nurse went on. “That’s a very stressful transition.”

“High school was stressful.” I snorted. “A restaurant kitchen is spa-like compared to this place. I don’t feel more anxious than I was before.”

He just smiled at that sadly and patted my knees. A little patronizing, but I’m the nineteen-year-old who went to her old high school because I’m … taking too many unplanned naps? So …