Thoughts Thought When I Should Be Sleeping

I've been fooling around with this stream of consciousness format for a little while. So far this is the best that's come out of it and all it does is prove I'm very insane and very emo all in one quick punch.



Sometimes I feel like my entire life flows into me all at one moment. Occassionally this occurs to me in delightful instants when my brain has been obliterated by heavy drinking, or in a strange blip of neural connection, I realize that for the next thirty-seven seconds, I will have everything I want. These never last long, but they feel good.

Othertimes, I'll suddenly remember something that's been hiding behind folds in my neural pathways: some silly little memory about shower curtains in a community bathroom my freshman year or the sudden realization that a year ago beautiful things said from an ocean away fucked me up more than I take into account.

And then these thoughts lead to an onslaught of a million others. Suddenly it's not the distraction of this shitty mattress that's keeping me awake, it's every minute of my life piled on top of me until breathing is just a fantasy from the past.

I figure I don't really know what I want. I figure I'll never get it anyway. My throat gets dry from being so tense and suddenly everything seems impossible and I'm staring at a digital picture of myself and I'm horrified.

I'm wondering when the post office opens and I'm listening to freshman year favorites the Postal Service and I'm falling back into darkened streets in Columbia where I'm walking home in a maroon shirt and blue pants with my visor hanging over my shoulder and staring at Greek letters on top of giant Southern estates and feeling more connected to the yellow bricks I used to steal bacon off of in games with the neighbors as my mom comes home from work early in the morning. And it's 6 a.m. there and here.

I'm thinking that the layers of everything I can't see are hiding very important things from me. Hidden declarations of love that were hiding lies. Hidden memories of how naive I used to be, when I would be lying awake, taking calls where you would be pseudo innocently convincing me to go out with my replacment and all I wanted was an ID and a six pack so I can obliterate the very notion of it.

I'm keeping such a tight grip on everything that eventually it turns me against myself. After all, we carry all the years with us; they're inside all at once. I am simultaneously being smacked in the lunchroom in fifth grade and dripping inside acoustic guitar and beers with Jenny on a Saturday night that hasn't happened yet, on a timeline that spins back around inside me and disappears inside a bowl of crunched paper that will soon hold a lonely can of spaghettios, resting on scars that won't fade and don't make sense. I was drunk, I tripped, I was upset, I missed, I'm hydroplaning into a tree and hearing the roots shatter while I lie and watch everyone believe it.

I'm screaming at myself for ruining everything. And I'm screaming at you for insisting you know better. I'm blaming you for keeping me up tonight. Nothing is verbalized and there are no promises--and I would prefer it that way. If, by chance, you never want to talk to me again I'd prefer if we never really talked to begin with. And it becomes solidly impossible to admit that I don't know what I'm doing even though I know I don't know. And this is why I'm happy when I'm drunk because nobody holds me accountable. Not even me.

I'm sure there were four good years. I'm sure those were the most ignorant years, where bliss came from the sheer unawareness I walked across every morning, occassionally in heels that made you lecture me on the walk back home; the lecture that cracked everything open and just became injustice afterward. You have no idea how hard I tried, how I try so hard I'm nothing but effort anymore.

I'm sick of my mouth and the fingertips that are spilling words that come from God knows where and who knows where He is anymore anyway. I'm back in Young Life singing old Bruce Springsteen with the girls with green and blue hair and listening to the Dead Kennedys in the car with the redhead. We're at a McDonalds on Manchester road where we'll spend countless evenings at Steak n Shake and that custard place and Bread Co because this is the suburbs and we don't have anything better to do.

And I will always have something better to do; something better I should do; something better I won't do. I like to keep myself down. I like to be berated for it. I like that you make me uncomfortable when the lights are on. It kills me that I don't know you. It kills me that you're probably right. It kills me that I'm probably not strong enough for this and certainly not good enough. And killing myself only makes me weaker and makes my knees hurt again--this time not from the scrapes I got tripping over stairs when my equilibrium got stuck in bottles that get recycled and leave me forever.

In ten minutes I won't be me anymore. I'll be ten minutes more tired and six minutes more annoyed from listening to the loud garbage trucks outside and three minutes more frantic because I fear I'll never sleep again and one minute more relieved because I've written enough bullshit to calm myself down for awhile.

And so now the moment is over. And I forget where I've been. And it hides again. And everything's just as completely fucked up as it ever was and I'm pretty much solely responsible.

















People throw these words around. And they don't mean anything.