Sweet dreams are made of this...

Every night i die.
That fearful, soil-myself-and-run kinda death.
The death of panic.
i can't hardly sleep, worried that my nightly six-and-thirty will become eight-and-thirty and i will resurrect late once again.
my own damnation, trying desperately to save myself from, well, you know.
Now that it comes down to the wire,
Now that i'm about to become homeless and jobless and wifeless,
Now do i ask for help.
Now do i see what i have to do to fix myself.
...Unless it's medical...
Unless i'm deformed and physically unsound to do this job i love.
Then i'm just up the proverbial creek.
i've used up all the goodwill i had coming to me.
No one at work will fill my vanguard,
No one at home to hold me aloft while i struggle to continue the charge.
i don't dream anymore.
(Another lovely red flag of defect)
My "sleep" is interchained streams of low-grade fear and bursts of awakening panic.
i dreamed last night.
Dreamed of living alone.
Of being, truly, alone.
No family wanted me.
No job would have me.
the grime encrusted on the strap of the pack i shouldered so tactile, i believed my memory injury has simply gotten the best of me and i WAS the man i felt.
Sunburned, weathered, leather of skin.
Scraggly chest-length beard and greasy, matted dreadlocks,
Red color almost obscured by countless hours of road grime and windblown dust.
i awake.
Fetally curled, teeth draw blood from the knuckle holding back a despairing howl.
Breath hammers a counterpoint to my racing heartbeat.
i wipe the rivulets of sweat from my face with the sheet,
Rolling over to face the empty half of our bed,
(Wait, what?)
i surrender again to the fear of sleep.