Endless Days

I guess I was fourteen or so when it started. Insomnia. I didn't know the word for what I was going through. I only knew I couldn't sleep. Hours lying in bed, masturbating and waiting for the world to shut down. It never did. The mornings were the worst, though. Waking up after just dozing off and then trying to make it through school and football and the after-school job. Rinse, repeat.

Then you get used to it, can't live life without it. The grogginess. Alternatives- suck down that Dimetapp. The world is so much easier in grape flavored slow motion.

I look back on those years and see the decline.

Over the past twenty-five years I've played a hard game of tag with insomnia and all which goes with it. Your mind plays tricks on you. Paranoia bumps you. Anxiety kicks you in the nuts.

The frustration shifts into overdrive.

For years I've done everything they tell you to do: eat right, become an exercise freak, cut down on the booze and coffee. Nothing helps. Melatonin is a joke. Dropping Ambien works one night and screws you the next.

Fast forward. The cycle continues. This morning I woke up from zero sleep- three nights in a row. Scratchy eyed. Sloppy food tastes soooo gooood. I don't want to do anything, but go to work early. Making it through the day...take two slugs of Nyquil and try to be productive- that's how it feels.

Adrenaline spikes. Every day I run a mile to the fitness course, scream through hairy obstacles twice and then hump it back- sweat out the bad juice. Pumped. Hard muscle- earned. The heat and humidity down here right now is suffocating and I look like I've been through a water boarding session. I get the high for a few hours and then the bottom falls out. I'm swimming in quick sand.

So what's it all about? Taking what one can get from the hell one is in. Along the way a sort of dreamy existence takes over. Little fucked up head trips. You glide through the daily grind because you just don't care. One goes from a drone to a fountain of pure, crystalline creativity. You fly.

Will night number four catch me in a naked choke?

I sit here banging the keyboard. Words assimilate. Phrases into sentences. Print that thing out, mark it with ink: Wrong. Wrong. Right! Life falls back into place, better than before.

And I understand.

Stay chill.