Sleepless nights

I awake drenched in hot sweat. My heart beats wildly inside my chest. I try to bring my racing thoughts to a pause, but my attempts to pacify my nighttime terrors prove futile.

I stumble to the bathroom and throw cold water on my face. I take a couple of deep breaths to reconnect to reality.

After sixty seconds or so, I regain a semblance of composure. I reach for a towel and dry off my face. I look up in the mirror and get a glimpse of the man that transformed my dreams into nightmares.

Tears well up and cascade down my cheeks as the reflections are laced with reminiscences of past violence that is cruelly scarred on my face.

I quickly look away from the mirror in which the wounded child within peers out to present day struggles through the eyes of a shaken man, a haunted man, a man without resolve; the man who is me.

Shaken but not stirred, I stammer back to bed. I try frantically to repress harrowing childhood memories far below consciousness without much success. Alas, childhood agonies remain ravenously alive inside my mind's eye.

With eyes wide open, I don’t see any restive sleep obtained this night. As usual, my day begins...