Boulevard of Broken Dreams

Insomniac

      "What?"

"Do you not understand what they are, Layla?"

"Of course I fucking know what they are, but there is no way in hell im going Schizo! There's no fucking way!" I shriek in aggravation.

"Layla, please calm down. There is no official diagnosis for that, but if your symptoms get worse, it's something we need to keep in mind."

"You don't need to keep anything in mind! Matter a fact, get out of my mind! Quit analyzing me! You don't know anything! Did you go to med school for like half of your life just to be wrong and fucking stupid? You don't know what I'm dealing with! What I saw was real. Billie is real. Boston was real. These weren't dreams, this was the real world! Get that through your skull!" I smack the table in anger and quickly book out of the room. My mom caught up with me ten minutes later.

"Sweetie!" She cried after me. "I'm so worried for you! Please, honey, don't be angry with the doctor. Your cousin has it too, maybe it's just meant to be."

"Don't be worried," I numbly state. "There's nothing wrong with me."

"But honey, the doctor said—"

"I could care less about what the doctor said!" I shout. "He doesn't know anything. I'm not sick. This isn't my imagination, this is like a different realm. I'm going to figure it out. I'm not alone, mom. It's going to be okay."

She began to cry more and had to stop at the steps of the hospital to weep.

"Mom why are you crying?" I attempt to console her.

"Do you hear yourself, Layla? It's eating you up, just like it does to everyone else."

· * *

It was a long fucking day, I'll tell you that much. My parents were freaking out about the fact I could be a schizophrenic, and the more I tried to explain that wasn't it, the more I was proving their point.

After being dolled by my parents, I ran into my room and began throwing a temper tantrum. I knocked some shit off my desks and ripped off an old poster that just seemed to be mocking me. Earlier that day, I wanted to go back to sleep so I could see Billie. However, after hearing that I may just be chemically insane, I didn't even want to look at my bed. Dreaming meant hallucinations, and that meant my symptoms for this fucking disease were getting worse. I couldn't have that.

"I'm sorry Billie," I say to myself. "I'm not going to sleep, not if I can help it."

And that's what began my insomnia.

.* * *

You guessed it, my new favorite album was Insomniac by Green Day. It was the only thing that seemed to make sense for what I was going through. It had been two full days without any rest and I felt like I was on the brink of destruction. I was terribly afraid to go to sleep. My parents made me take the rest of the month off of work, they knew I was getting bad.

"Layla, you have to get some sleep," my father told me at around 3 am in the morning. He could hear my music blasting from my laptop in the dead of the night.

"I can't dad, you know I can't," I tell him.

"Are you scared that you are going to see things again?"

"I'm not scared, I'm terrified. Terrified that I'm going to lose my mind and lose control. I can't be confused again, I can't." My voice stuttered the truth through my exhaustion.