The Nightly Ritual

I lay flat on my stomach every night and place my left ear to the pillow. My palms down on the soft sheets, elbows bent at ninety degrees, almost as if I am against a wall being checked by a cop. In a way I am. This ritual is my way of surveying myself at the end of the day.
My eyes stay open because I know if they close my peace of mind will cease to exist. Time passes. As my breathing slows my eyelids flutter and slowly fall. I hear lullabies floating through the air around me and it is at this moment that I remember why I do this. These two to three minutes I spend swaddled in pure nothingness are euphoric enough to make what comes next tolerable. It's when the bubble encasing me from the outside world pops. The sound of a door or a voice outside my window. I am awake but I cannot control my mind. I cannot fully step out of the trance. I cannot keep my blood pressure from rising when I become too aware of myself. Senses heighten when other senses are blocked. No sight, induces a much more sensitive touch. Suddenly the room goes from a dark exoskeleton of walls to just black. As if floating in a sensory deprivation chamber. You have no choice but to feel your body. With my eyes closed I have discovered the lumps of fat hidden under other folds, and I can feel single straggling hairs being moved against the sheets that my mother gave me for Christmas. I become aware of how broad my shoulders are and I feel the knots in my muscles pressing deeper into my back as I place more imaginary weight on it.
It scares me sometimes. The realization that I have become a pack-mule. A slave who is being held to impossible standards, being told to carry monstrous loads, being judged unmercifully.
But the Slave Master is familiar. I get the funny feeling that I am looking into a mirror and that is when I open my eyes.