I LEARNED TO SLEEP WITH MY EYES OPEN

by Lauren Droge

The first time I woke up choking, I blamed the weather.

Cold air. Dry throat. A seasonal shift. Something reasonable. Something that did not require rearranging the architecture of my past.

Denial prefers small explanations. It hands them to you gently, like tissues.

It is an unsettling thing to realize your body has been keeping minutes from a meeting you refused to attend.

I do not remember the exact day fear became muscular. There was no cinematic rupture. No dramatic score. Just a quiet recalibration. My nervous system began scanning rooms before I did. My lungs practiced holding less air.

At night, I do not sleep. I monitor.

My partner tells me I push against him sometimes — not violently, just urgently. As if there is an invisible weight pressing down and I am trying to dislodge it. I wake with my heart sprinting and no visible threat to justify it. The room is dim and harmless. The door is closed. The house is still.

Still, my throat burns with rehearsal.

There was a moment — years ago — when someone stood too close behind me. Close enough that I could feel the heat of their breath at the back of my neck. I remember the texture of the carpet under my palms. The way the air thickened. The way my voice decided, without consulting me, not to exist.

Nothing cinematic happened after that. The world did not crack open. The sun rose the next morning as if nothing had shifted.

But something had.

Trauma is often described as memory. That feels incomplete. Memory implies narrative. This is more primitive than that. This is reflex. This is muscle. This is the body insisting on vigilance long after vigilance is required.

By morning I am composed. Functional. Pleasant. I make coffee. I answer emails. I exist in fluorescent lighting without incident.

No one sees the invisible inventory I carry into sleep.

Night is a courtroom.

Exhibit A: breath interrupted.
Exhibit B: silence learned too well.
Exhibit C: the body, refusing to adjourn.

I used to think healing meant forgetting.

Now I think it might mean staying.

Staying in the room.
Staying in the body.
Staying long enough to convince it that the door can close — and remain closed — without consequence.

Some nights, I almost believe it.

Some nights, I sleep.