I’m a light sleeper

Kristie De Garis

This morning the very first bar of birdsong woke me. It’s been this way since I first became a mother twenty years ago. Last week I read a study about it: maternal hypervigilance. I stretch into my hips, then my shoulders, and wince as I feel stiff, then tender. In the grainy, dawn light I listen to our home. No one else is awake.

I pick up my phone, put in the passcode. Tired fingers mean I’m wrong twice. I’ve had this phone for seven months, but when I set it up, it was evening. Too dark to do facial recognition. I should set up facial recognition, I think. Like I always do. On my third try, the screen comes alive, and I see the time on the home screen: 5.40a.m. I click into the third folder on the second line of folders on the screen. Muscle memory. But Instagram is not there. I remember that I deleted it again two days ago. I consider redownloading, then spend a few minutes reminding myself why I should absolutely not redownload. Instead, I pick up a book. I’m reading The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa. I don’t know if I like it. I catch myself skimming the page. When I realise, I start reading again. I have this thing where if I don’t read every word in a book, if I skim at all, I feel like I didn’t read the book—that if I said I’d read it, I’d be lying. After a few minutes of reading a detailed description of an ornate room, I pick up my phone again and become distracted responding to messages on WhatsApp. Before I know it, I’m online googling ‘news’. I read the first headline. School bombed in Iran. I regret my decision to engage with the world. I pick up my book and read two pages properly before deciding that I should take my medication before I forget.

I’ve printed out a list of everything I need to take. It’s hidden, folded under a pile of books. The half-filled glass beside my bed has fluff floating in it, so I go downstairs, empty it into the sink and refill it from the filter inside the fridge. I take a swig and wonder if this filter definitely removes microplastics. Did we check when we bought it? I should look at the manufacturer’s website. Back in my room, I smooth out the list of medications, unfolding a dog-eared corner. I search for the corresponding packets and pills in the overstuffed drawer beneath my bed. I add ‘clean out drawer under bed’ to the task app on my phone. It tells me that, since the beginning of the year, I’ve completed only fourteen tasks. But, to be fair, I mostly forget to write down what needs to be done. Maybe then fourteen is good. Carefully working my way down the list, I find the correct packets and bottles and lay them out. I double check milligram amounts before popping, placing, swallowing. I pick up stray circles of silver foil from the carpet and put them in the bin.

In the kitchen, I forage for breakfast. I sigh. I sigh again. There was a time I enjoyed food, but it’s hard to believe that I have to keep doing this forever. I have to keep eating multiple times a day, every day, until I die. And it’s not the eating that’s the issue necessarily. It’s the thinking about eating. The choosing, planning, making. If someone did all of that and put the food in my mouth, maybe that could be OK. Maybe then I could enjoy it. I settle on three pieces of ham scrunched into my mouth, then walk to the bathroom eating a piece of gluten-free bread with dairy-free butter.

I’ve been using a new toothpaste meant to help restore enamel. I noticed my teeth looked yellow. I read that it’s probably just from aging. I don’t care too much about aging generally, but I care about this because when I smile you can see so many of my teeth. My first boyfriend’s mum said I had a mouth like a letterbox. I search for the tube on the messy counter. I find it. It’s lidless. I search for the lid. It’s gone. I squeeze toothpaste onto my frayed toothbrush and think that it’s probably too much. I read recently that you don’t need as much as you think. and too much is bad for you. I scrape some off with my finger, rub it off on the side of the sink. I will clean it up later, I think. I really will clean it up later, I think.

Turning on the tap, I see the lid from my toothpaste in the drain. I try to get it out with my longest nail, but it’s stuck. The drain is the perfect size to hold it. It’s seamless. I walk downstairs to the kitchen, brushing my teeth as I go, and get a knife. The little orange one we use to chop veg. Still brushing my teeth, I stab it into the silver plastic. But it rebounds. I stab, stab, stab until eventually the knife skewers the lid and I can lift it out. I spit a mouthful of toothpaste, and as I watch the foamy remnants swirl away, realise I haven’t flossed in days. No floss on the counter. I ransack the cabinet that’s supposed to be for extras but has instead become a place to put anything. I find two flossers. I pick the one that has less dust on it, rinse it under the tap, and get to work. The gums around three of my teeth bleed. When I spit, the foam is coral pink.

Walking back through the kitchen to my bedroom, I remember that I wasn’t supposed to eat for an hour after taking one of my medications. But that’s been the case for six years. I’m not sure why the habit continues to elude me. Which reminds me, I’ve forgotten to take my HRT. That’s not on the printed list. I should add it. I score through three boxes on the calendar that’s conveniently printed on the back of the cardboard. I pick up the plastic dispenser and spray the cold liquid onto my thigh. The first two pumps are fine, the third falters, sputters. I don’t know if it has dispensed the right dose. I consider doing another spray. But that might be too much. I decide to leave it at two and a half-ish, and hope my brain doesn’t notice the chemical difference. Now I have to wait to get dressed. Just because it feels dry doesn’t mean it is.

I pick up clothes from the pile on my chair until I find something that can survive a few more days without being washed. I look for the specialist sandals that stop the pain in my arches. They’re under a towel. Back in the kitchen, I open the dishwasher. The load is clean. I stare at it for a few seconds, then close the door. I hope someone else will empty it. I don’t mind stacking it, but I hate emptying it. The clock on the oven says 7a.m. My youngest daughter is probably up.

She’s on her bed, wild hair, sleepy eyes, headphones on. I ask her how she slept. She says she slept well. She asks me how I slept. I consider telling her the truth, but decide to tell her I slept well instead. I ask her what she’s listening to. She tells me it’s the fourteenth book in the Percy Jackson series. I ask her if she’s enjoying it. She tells me that she is and asks if she can tell me about Greek Mythology. It’s very considerate of her to ask, I think. But then again, I don’t think I’ve ever said no. Pausing her audiobook, she tells me that the Chimera is her favourite Greek monster. It has a lion’s head, a goat’s body and a serpent’s tail. The Chimera is a woman. She looks at me. Did I know that? Did I know the Chimera was a woman, I ask. Yeah, she says. I didn’t know that, I say. I pause, waiting a respectful amount of time so she understands that I was definitely paying attention to the Chimera conversation, then ask her if she’s done all of her stuff. What stuff, she asks. I point to the task boards I bought her two weeks ago. The chores are written down and next to them is a little switch that can click to a tick or a cross. I see a column of red crosses. That stuff.

While she gets ready, I go downstairs to see if the milkman has been. On our doorstep there are two bottles waiting. Once in my hands I notice that the lids are sort of puffed up. Turgid little domes. I wonder if this means the milk has gone off. If it was in the sun for too long. Is two hours too long? I put the milk on the table and on my phone type, ‘Foil lid raised on milk bottle is milk off’. I read through the AI results first. It doesn’t look good. It can be a sign that milk has gone off, that bacteria have gotten in and are multiplying, producing gas. There seems to be a difference between hard bloating and soft bloating. I try pushing a lid down with my finger. I’m not sure exactly where the line is, but this seems like soft bloating to me. Soft bloating can be due to a change in temperature. That makes sense. It was cold last night. I put the bottles in the fridge.

At the bottom of the stairs, I shout to my daughter. Has she done her stuff yet? She replies after a couple of seconds. She says she’s sorry. She got distracted. She hasn’t started. She’ll do it right now. I remind myself that being annoyed is unproductive. That if I get annoyed, she’ll get upset and everything will go slower. Even slower than it’s going now. I can’t stop thinking about the milk.

At the bottom of the stairs, I allow myself my favourite fantasy. I could burn it all down. One decision would be enough to destroy everything. My life, that has taken years to build, takes all my energy to maintain, could be demolished in minutes. I could fuck the married guy who flirts with me at the park while our kids play, let him come inside me. Make eye contact with his wife, head of the PTA, during meetings at my daughter’s school. I could tell people what I think of them. Like really tell them. Grit my teeth and let hot, seething spittle fleck onto their shirts, their faces. I could walk along our quiet street at 3a.m. and smash every wing mirror off the tightly parked cars, revel in the chaos of shattered glass and shrieking alarms. I could, if I wanted to. I don’t want to. But I could.

I pick a clean cup from the dishwasher. It smells faintly of detergent. That’s probably fine. It’s probably designed to rinse the chemicals off properly. It must be. I switch on the kettle. Waiting, I press the stray brown sugar granules on the counter hard into the pad of my index finger. Lifting my hand, I watch as they linger there, briefly embedded, then as they fall one by one onto the floor. My daughter appears. Turquoise headphones over her ears, lips moving silently as she sings along to a song. The kettle boils.

This essay was originally published in Gutter #34. Subscribe to Gutter for access to everything we publish.

Kristie De Garis is the author of Drystone: A Life Rebuilt (Birlinn/Polygon, 2025), a memoir of rural life, loss, and reconstruction.