come on now, you didn't think you were going to get away with not dreaming about the undead after all this business at work, did you?--that was the problem with you thinkers: all you ever did was thinking!--the truth is that you thought far too much--you should've been out there living, trying to get laid, trying to knock the hell out of the world with your next verse...but instead, there you were lying awake for hours, literally hours, and all because of what?: some witch at work who wants to run everyone's world by being what she can't help but being?--you'd even said it to yourself driving home, that she wasn't a bad person, she was just a petty and sick ******* who had to make everyone's life that much lousier, that was her "power," if you wanted to call such a thing power...but it's not like she was your boss, she'd just said something that had injured you because you'd allowed it to injure you, because it had been true a long time ago that you'd let it appear that you'd "****** up" when in truth you'd saved yourself a ton of misery by doing so--the thing itself was so small, though, that only someone who was picayune was ever going to know that you'd still felt ****** up over it...it just so happens that she had remembered and that she was just petty and picky enough to throw it back in your face at the exact right time...but how often had you said to yourself that you really needed to combat such ******* behavior by thinking as clearly as you could in the moment, by just knowing that you hadn't done anything wrong, that in most cases, you were probably smarter and more capable than whoever it was who was accusing of something ridiculous or trying to make you look bad for whatever reason...and how often had you failed in taking this information to heart, facts that would make anyone else feel good about themselves, but with you, it was just another reason why you made yourself miserable: you just couldn't translate all of these individual positive things about you into a more cohesive and positive whole--to you, you were always doing spin control to get yourself back from the edge you felt they were all pushing you closer and closer toward--and when you got there, and if you went over, what then?--only what had happened last night, which is what was happening all the time...you lie awake sleepless and fuming over feeling like you were made to look bad even understanding in the moment that you would never remember this ***** or anything she said, that you'd even forget her name in time because people like that were nothing to you, they meant nothing to you--but how long would that take?: five years, ten years?--you wanted to forget all about her now, but it's not like you weren't ever going to see her again, which is why you were getting all stressed out, because in a few hours, you'd have to drag your sorry carcass out of bed and go back there and do it all over again--so you were going to have to figure out a way to evolve through this experience, you were going to have to sort all this out in your head and get right with it somehow because in fewer than twenty-four hours, you'd be right back here, crawling into bed and asking yourself if it was going to be "another one of those nights" where you got up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom and when you returned, found it impossible to get your mind off of anything but what had happened involving this woman, this creature, this **** who was a bought on all womankind--yes, she was really that bad, maybe not a bad person per se, but bad enough to lump her in with all the other ***** you'd ever run across in your travails in this world, these bleeding animals who just wanted the world to serve them in one form or fashion and who didn't care who had to lie facedown in the mud to do it--in such a scenario, that doomed fool lying facedown was you...but you didn't want that to be you, and at the very least you'd wanted to have your slice of revenge by having your slice of life have nothing to do with her, by being able to crawl into bed and get good sleep and if you couldn't, then let the reason be anything but having to do with her--god almighty, how many women like her had you encountered in your life, and already your father's voice was drilling down to the very core of the question: how many times had you met people like her, and how many times had you let them get to you, bother your harass you, ******* up, make you look bad, ruin your sleep, ruin your day?--and you still hadn't found a way to not give a ****, you still hadn't found a way to disconnect from caring about whatever it was that made you feel like it was your reputation on the line?--your old man was right in his own way, though: you cared far too much about how you were perceived than you wanted to believe you did, and wasn't all of this, wasn't your insomnia over this ***** the proof of it?--and now you were going back to your old nervous habit of chewing at the dead skin of your fingers, watching them become gnawed and decayed and all because of this nonsense you had let go to your head--and you wanted to think therapy had made you better somehow, that it had opened up the pathways in your mind to the "self-talk" that was going to save you?--did you call this bit of torture salvation?--but no, it wasn't like this every night, it really wasn't...only when things got to you, only when you were stressed out...but still, the question should be, "why do you allow yourself to get stressed out over situations out of your control?"--invariable, it all leads to these dreams where the undead find you wherever you go to run and hide, and last night you'd gotten especially clever and told yourself if all else failed, you could hide in the walls, and yet, you had seen her climb into those walls, which is when you knew even your dreams were smarter than you--enough was enough though, right?--no way on earth or in hell should you allow any of this to continue: you were a grown-*** man in his mid-forties, you were a hard worker, you were good at what you did, and more than anything else, this ***** did not get to decide what kind of a person you were--you needed to detach yourself from the idea that she was going to make your life a hell, that she was going to do this or that to you because what was all that anyway?--it was just worry atop worry, and all of it was useless and needless, all of it was based on fear and as you'd been asking yourself for the last few decades, when had fear ever served you?--all of this only seemed like you were in prison, but it was one you had built for yourself...wasn't it bad enough your old man had drilled into you not just those words of criticism about how you'd let everything "get to you," but also that he'd made you care so much, too much, about what others thought because you were always trying to please them just like you were always trying to please him?--and how often had you been able to do this successfully to the point where you didn't have to try so hard anymore?: never--you had never succeeded in such a venture because there was always another hour, another day, another task for you to accomplish to another's satisfaction...this was the paradigm you'd been locked into...but it wasn't too late, for look, just look at how you'd analyzed all of this, at how wonderfully you'd dismantled all the **** that surrounded the real reason why you wasted others to accept you, to find you and label you as "good"--that never would've been possible before, you would've just stayed awake the whole night long and woken up in a foul mood and let it ruin a new day...but not anymore, right?--well, almost: because while the slogan "knowledge is power" seems like an empowering one, what is it really?--do you feel any more powerful than you did before you started having this conversation with yourself?--were you going to be able to make all this ******* in your life disappear just like that(!) because you'd suddenly figured out that you wasted people to think highly of you because you'd never been able to get your father to think highly of you?--no, no, because there you were turning over and over in bed trying to unlock the thing that would let you live again, that would let you sleep again...there you were begging for mercy, for a clue as to how to do this nightwork within you, for it felt like you were being made to dig your own grave whenever this happened to you, and the deeper you dug, the more out felt trapped in that hole you'd just made deeper--what else could you do but make it deeper?: but when had you looked up, when had you asked if you couldn't just dig your hands into the packed earth and climb out?--this is how and where your imagination had failed you, for yes, you had managed to fal, back asleep, it hadn't conquered you quite so much...but here you were being presented with the facts all over again that it would happen again and again and that you were doomed to allow it to because, really, who didn't want others to think well of them?--you were always going to be human--