I'm sitting here at half past eight in the morning, woozy from not having slept all night and still hard in the midst of work, with end nowhere near in sight.

And wondering if the past month has been a bad dream. Part of me wants to doze off only to wake up and find that my life is as it was before 8 February, the night I chose to open my big mouth. It all doesn't seem real in the ugly morning light. Maybe in the midst of washing my face later I'll remember I have a date with him tonight. Or I'll receive tickets for a play we booked. Or I'll see an MSN message just saying hi dear.

Perhaps everything is as it was. Just normal.

Because if not, everything that's happening to me now is completely not normal.

Maybe I just hallucinated the whole thing. Maybe if I sleep a little, I'll sober up a bit and wake up to my normal life? Maybe it's one of those dreams where you know you have to 'go back to a deep sleep' and open your eyes back in your own world?

Maybe I'm hoping the physical exhaustion will override the emotional exhaustion enough so my mind will stop working. But if my mind stops working, how do I do work?

I need some sleep, but I refuse to sleep.

Then I alternate that with bouts of complete, exhausted unconsciousness. Then I don't sleep again. Then I nap. Then I stay up again.

I'm going mad.