Naps in the afternoon are both blissful and nightmarish. The feeling of crawling between my soft clean sheets in the middle of the day is delicious. The peaceful moments as my body relaxes and my eyes begin to close are small miracles in the days when my heart beats too fast, and each muscle in my back tightens, contracts. To touch the coveted space between my sheets feels like heaven.

Yet it is the waking that almost physically hurts. When my eyes open the afternoon has worn on, and the sky is darkening. My dreams are worst in the daytime and hover between waking and sleep for so long. While my mind levitates, it seems to keep it more conscious, so that every intricacy of my dream world becomes magnified. The uncomfortable becomes grotesque, and I wake feeling scared of dusk. My body is fevered and hungry for something it cannot quite name.