The Cell

It's 5:20 am. I wish I could tell you that I have gotten up early with an eager enthusiasm to face the day and it's challenges, but the truth is, I have yet to sleep . Given that I am a chronic night owl, I have only been trying to sleep for a short time but this has the feeling like that rest is not coming anytime soon, the kind of night where even sleeping pills are a lost cause.

Alone I sit at this desk waiting for the dawn to mock me as she does every morning to those who have spent the night teased by the bitch-goddess of sleep. The noise in my head is at full pitch and I am unable to do anything but listen. I write now for reasons I am unsure of although I think, in the end if I am going to go insane, I'd rather do so on the page than while staring at the ceiling. Or, to put it more bleakly, it seems better to spill forth a bleeding heart then to contemplate the thought of a bloody wrist.

The cliche of the moment seems to be that I can't get out of my own way, or specifically out of my own head. I can think only of the devices of this mental torture chamber that continually ravage my mind and soul. Fear, doubt, depression, and low self-esteem are my tormentors. I am 25 years old, currently flat broke and unemployed, am I working towards an advanced degree which feels as though it will not pay dividends anytime soon, and gripped by a cycle of seemingly endless romantic and sexual frustrations. My only ally is logic which tells me both that my problems are common and/or that can be alleviated through patience or pro activity. All decent arguments, but the voice of logic tends to fade as the hope for sleep does.

I have a body that doesn't work or at the very least doesn't cooperate with me thus meaning that I have only my self poisoning mind to rely on. My old friend logic tries again to tell me that am I and always will be a survivor but the head demons drown it out with a drum beat on my brain that serves only as a reminder of just how exhausting it can be to have to metaphorically (or even literally at times) to go through the back door or take the long road. The dull body aches from lack of movement made worse by the psycho-somatic contributions of depression. All this could be cured by sleep....a sleep which doesn't come at all or just shallow enough to hint at pleasant dreams.

Instead most days I remain all too awake, a legally sanctioned junkie, slave to the "fixes" of pale orange bottles named "zoloft" or "ambien" or "xanax", again like a junkie getting no high but only maintaining to say alive in a sense, a dull status quo that at times seems at the brink of madness. Wanting to scream and claw at my brain but lacking the energy even for that. A state of uncertainty where I am paralyzed in body and soul begets a desire to look for God at the bottom of a bottle or in the form of disciples that come filling needles. Luckily or not, that logic again mostly keeps me from such pilgrimages and I instead dance around the golden calves of modernity taking the forms of bad food or bad TV or novels that canonize the tortured soul as my only patron saint. Sometimes the light at the end of the tunnel comes only from the glow of a cigarette, a poison glow that can kill me even before the weight of the world does.

So what now? Do I give in to the deafening noise shrieking from the dark corners of my mind and die a living Death? Do I strain against the din and listen for whispers of hope? Do I fall to my knees and pray to God for deliverance?

Who knows....

For now,

I will settle for sleep