I’ve tossed and turned for hours and I’m about ready to give up on sleep. Night sweats and hot flashes are not conducive to good rest and I feel so wound up and disoriented from this desperate need to rest that I don’t know that I am really capable of coherent thought at the moment. My thoughts race on some Silent-Hill-esque distorted merry-go-round on which the horses are darkly demonic with red eyes and flaming nostrils… rotting flesh and exposed bone… where the calliope is just off-key and so discordant and loud it sets your teeth on edge. This dark carnival of my mind… this sea of faces… I don’t know what to do with it all… here a leering clown, terrifying and somehow familiar under the painted face… there a carnival barker pedaling wares in a voice that triggers unwanted memories and me racing down the freeway trying to escape all of it…. I don’t want these thoughts, memories, fears, doubts and emotions washing over me like a flood tide. I fear I may drown in this. Please, God, don’t let me drown…