7. I haven't been sleepiing well lately, and last night was the worst. Having been exhausted from a full 7 AM to midnight day, I brushed my teeth and went to bed immediately after getting home.
A good night's sleep was not in store for me, however. Imagine the least soundproof house ever and a solid wooden bed frame where the word "mattress" had never been uttered nor heard in the house. The comforter provided some cushioning, so I slept on top of it in all my clothes and another thin blanket, but it's been about 13C so I was never really warm.
I had barely closed my eyes, it seemed, when a phone rang at rock-concert level decibels in the living room. The ringtone was unfamiliar and I wouldn't have put it past the lack-of-insulation to say it was coming from a neighbor's house. Each morning from bed I could hear the conversations of the open-air breakfast place downstairs and across the street, after all. But after half a minute both my mom and my grandma's doors opened and the phone stopped, followed by their conversation in Chinese - it turns out my grandma called it, or set it off somehow, because she wanted to test if it was working. My mom had brought back that phone for her since she was losing her hearing and needed a louder phone. Go figure.
Being very sensitive to light, I couldn't sleep for another ten minutes while my grandma used the bathroom and settled back into bed. I slept, but was pulled slowly into half-consciousness by my hand continuously itching my other wrist until I realized I had a mosquito bite. I put some saliva on it, the quick fix, and was woken again when I realized I was scratching my other arm. As soon as my sluggish mind figured out it wasn't the same bite, meaning I was being actively bitten, I cursed the little bastard that was getting full off my blood and keeping me awake.
Keeping someone awake is a form of torture, did you know that? It feels terrible, really. It's one of the few interrogation techniques officially approved by the US army to use, since you're not actually causing blows, or something like that. I could almost metacognitively see my thoughts descending into madness.
It's actually impossible to sleep if you know a mosquito is in the room. My mom and aunt both testified to this at dinner as soon as I mentioned that I knew I kept getting more bites throughout the night. The presence of the little bugger is more harrowing than a tiger in the room. At least a tiger you can hear coming; with a mosquito, you are left with nothing but despair after the fact of having been bitten. At first all I wished was that it would leave me alone after the initial strikes; then I hoped it was not under the covers or inside my shirt; then, when it confirmed its presence by buzzing past my ear, that proximity alarm like a shark fin circling me in the ocean, I just prayed that it would not bite me in the ear, so I wouldn't lose my hearing.
There was no way that I could rest my head without leaving one ear exposed, however, and being completely facedown or face up would expose both, so that was out. Which ear would have to go, then? My left, decidedly, though it had better hearing. If I tried to sleep with one hand over it the back of that hand would just be bitten, and if I tried to sleep under the cover, well what was the point in doing that if it was small enough to get under my covers anyway? I needed to leave a hole to breathe, and surely it could follow the draft of my breath. Or what if it was under my covers anyway?
At the end of the
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