Drowing and sleeping

Night time is the worst for me. The quiet and the dark loosen ones imagination. Since I was young I haven't slept well, or kept regular hours. Maybe I could blame insomnia or the strange hours my mother tends to keep. Either way it doesn't really matter what the cause is.
I lay awake at night thinking, worrying... whatever. Tonight I am missing my dad so much it hurts. I spend the night clinging to what I do remember wishing I'd taken care to remember every tiny detail of every moment I ever spent with him. Of course after that I remind myself I was only a kid, I seemed so young then. Not that I'm old now... seriously I'm not old ok. It really kills me I was so stupid to take it for granted. What terrific fools young girls make.
If by chance I escape my relentless torturous regret, then the dreams come. I am certain I'm not the only one who has realistic dreams, but this knowledge does little to comfort me when I wake. Vivid images, tastes, smells, everything seems real. The other night it was my fingertips bleeding full of glass no matter how much I pulled out, there was still more. I love to dream, when the dreams are not like that! Most people would classify this particular dream as a nightmare, but again I'm not like that. Besides my nightmares carry with them uncontrollable fear even upon waking. Fear to live or breathe and most definitely fear to fall asleep again. One time a fear that became all to real. I had known there was something inherently different about that dream. The uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach never went away. You know the feeling that usually leaves as you return to consciousness, and truly realize the horror that unfolded was not real. I swallowed this fear for almost a month before it actually happened. An entire month I lived hoping it was only a childish fear of a silly dream. I knew. When he actually did die, so did I. I knew. I knew and I did nothing, I could do nothing. That's what I tell myself to survive, to keep afloat from one day to the next.
If you're drowning but not down yet, just keeping your head above water, you're alive but you aren't really living are you? So in my attempt to return from drowning I tell myself there is nothing I could have done to save such a wonderful man, to keep the center of my world breathing. For a year I saw him everywhere. In the Land Cruiser at the Maverik, speeding past me on the freeway, everywhere I do there I am and so was he. After the "sightings" stopped I started to miss them and I found myself sleeping every spare second hoping for a dream of him. When that didn't work I started drinking and avoided sleeping altogether. Here we are again, afraid to sleep but trying desperately, hoping for one more moment with my father. Dying to die, ha. Sorry bad joke, what will I say when I do see him again? Another bad joke "I was just dying to see you daddy!" Until then I will just have to be satisfied and learn to live with the rest of the world, sleeping or not here I come.
Just one more thank you to the one who saved me from drowning in the first place. I am forever in your debt and I am sorry for ever being so cruel to you. I was a child and that is no excuse. Thank you for keeping me safe even from myself.