I Have Insomnia

Sometimes I fear that my mother's people are still watching me. And that some night they will get into my house...and kill me. Or that I will become ill and wind up in the hospital and they'll kill me there.

When I was younger, I believe that few of my elders died a natural death. There were many suicides among the people I knew. I believe my mother had my father euthanized after an extensive death bed interrogation when he was dying of heart disease. I was manipulated into leaving his death bed so my mother could get to him, then given drugs in a drink so I would sleep through it.

Sometimes I believe my fears cannot be real. After all, the old Communist Party died in 1989 and the Soviet Union fell in 1991. My mother herself, a true red queen, died 13 years ago. But I have good reason to believe a new and very secretive CP has emerged out of the old one. I have been bullied, terrorized and harassed in one way or another all my life by my mother's people, and while I know they are gone now, I also know that my mother was a trainer for the latter part of her career and those she trained are still around.

I have had far too many bad experiences in my life to sleep soundly through the night or to live without caution and a certain amount of fear. In my life, it's hard to know where justifiable fear turns into outright paranoia. There's that old saying, "Even paranoid people can have real enemies."