Dark-thirty this morning, dreaming middle-aged cartoons, warm weight of usual blankets, quiet under familiar darkness, face languid, snorkeling peacefully in the cool pool of my favorite down pillow. A sudden internal jerk stirs my brain, snatching me violently mid-dream, pulling me downward, as if the mattress despises me with a vengeance sent from another realm. I gasp, out loud, or maybe still in the middle of a cold white hallway in my dreams. I am not sure which.

In the middle of the night, I was taken down a notch, or twenty.

Bright eyes and an easy smile were casually worn just yesterday as I admired the explosions of endless garden buffets for blocks and blocks and blocks. Now, I’ve been assaulted awake and know all too well, that I will be held hostage for the next few hours by my own brain. My brain is a fickle gangster. Its cruel roulette game of grabbing me in a headlock down to the nearest floor, humbling me into heaving and shiver-coated submission, cannot be predicted.

Its relentless green cackle surges through my head as the room tilts and turns while I tumble inside, face down on the wood floor – the barrel ride usually saved for the most egregious offenders in Hell and its sister cities. I ride the Ménière’s Monster Coaster around and around until 4:30am. My husband attempts to pass me various instruments of help from a standing position. I envy his very stance and optimism that I can be helped. I think of grasping a gliding dove while riding a merry-go-round going the opposite direction. I try to think of funny things as my dogs circle me confused and worried. But really, my only coherent mantra is that I just want to die.

In the end, I am carried under the arms, shivering, eyes clamped shut to ward off the spinning images, my bathroom floor relieved of my possessed body, now steamed and slippery from the performance of my 90 minute vertigo exorcism. I crawl carefully back into bed, suddenly needing the electric blanket to be urgently activated. Chattering. Shivering. Spinning. Spent. All my bodily fluids previously drained violently, on repeat, I return to where it all started, hoping to be deeply embalmed by sleep.