Apparently, I Have No Chill.

It is ten twenty- three on a Sunday Morning.

I have been up since six forty- one .

I have already gotten up, fed my beloved miniature pinscher/chihuahua, Cheechie, and washed and refilled her water dish.

I have also let her out to do her “business”.

I submitted two chapters of my fiction to this website for editing and now I am entering this contest.

The reason this reads like an itemized list is because I suffer from low self- esteem and depression; and in order to justify my existence I feel the need to do SOMETHING every moment of every day or else I am wasting my life.

According to my therapist, because I am a child of a parent who lived with untreated OCD, it was inferred in my household that sleep was for lazy people.

And in order to prove I wasn’t lazy, I functioned on very little sleep for a majority of my adult life to the point I believe my Circadian Rhythm is permanently and irrevocably off beat.

Briefly, I worked and went to school full time from about 1997-2006. I was also a single parent, so I’m sorry, sleep?

Sleep wasn’t a priority. As a matter of fact, for a few of those years, I lived with a friend and my children had to share a room.

I slept on my friend’s sofa bed for a few years. The kicker was that I didn’t want to pull out the bed part every night because the living room really wasn’t big enough for the bed part.

It was awkward, clumsy, and not to mention, unsightly, so I got me a really thick comforter and called it a night, or several nights rather. I never bothered with the sofa bed again. But it didn’t bother me much, because I was always up super early to get my kids ready for school and myself to either work or class.

So, rest? Please who had time to sleep, I had things to do.

I still had things to do after I received my BA in English the same year my first born graduated high-school. But getting a BA didn’t come with a salary increase at my job.

So, I worked full time while in grad school, and still had the audacity to go over to my sister’s house on Thursday evenings and beg her to go to poetry venues with me.

I remember the one day she looked at me with wide eyes as she tied her housecoat tighter around her and asked me with adamant, loving, shock,

“Bitch, do you ever sleep?”

That should have been my first sign there was something really wrong with me.

But no, in predictable “ Majique MiMi: You Can’t Make This Stuff Up” fashion, what do I do once I graduated grad-school?

Did I go to Europe?

Did I go on a cruise?

Did I buy myself a luxury item?

Nope, not me.

I got another job.

Exactly, besides me working full time at a call center assisting people with their health and welfare benefits annual enrollment during the day, I got hired to teach English Composition classes at my local community college.

The pay was good, but rent was still high, and I had one more child left at home so I applied at another county to teach English Composition at their school, and got hired.

If you’re counting that makes three jobs.

I worked six days a week three to four nights a week, and every Saturday.

Until I suffered a cerebral artery aneurysm rupture in November 2012 and have been physically and mentally disabled since then.

So, you’d think, I learned my lesson.

Because like my sister said, “God literally put you in the hospital for over a month and you still tried to escape? It’s like you’re afraid to rest.

Truth be told, I think it may be a little PTSD.

Nevertheless, it’s 11:43 on a Sunday Morning, and I should be going back to sleep, but I’m entering this writing contest….