Writer's Block

I sat at the dining room table across from a heaping pile of papers I had been pledging to go through for the last 3 weeks and next to a half empty glass of white zin. Some Zombie horror TV show that Shawn was entranced by was blaring in the background. It wasn’t a comfortable place for me to sit down and write out my thoughts, but I had to get some of it out.

I kept getting distracted by little things around me. My legs itched relentlessly. I kept adjusting and fidgeting, but couldn’t get in a comfortable place. I played with my newly cut hair and brooded in little ounces of regret, trying to remind myself that I had to get rid of those dead ends or it never would have grown like I wanted. Still, I missed my length.

I would pause every two sentences or so, look around, scratch my legs, stare at Shawn staring at the TV, and then stare at the carpet for a while. I felt like I was stuck at that table, like a child being forced to do his homework and couldn’t get up until it was done.

Every time I got stuck on a word or started to get Presque vu (which was often), I would end up staring at a scab on my arm for more than a minute if I were to guess, unable to hear anything in my mind because the words being said from the TV screen suddenly became vastly audible and jumped in front of the words I was searching for, making it impossible for me to leap to that perfect word or expression.

This was all my fault.. My brain was in a very lazy, unintelligible state, having not read or written in what might as well have been ages.

I pictured my mind to look like an old forgotten-about plant. It was something beautiful, probably with interesting colors and shapes, but right now it was nearing death. It was dried out, thirsty, wilting from all sides and losing color and life. It was obvious that no one had visited this plant for a very long time. It wasn’t necessarily forgotten, it was just that its caretaker had no idea how much life it was losing and didn’t have the time or enthusiasm to take care of it.

I shuddered, lost in silent hysteria at the image I created in my brain, of my brain and panicked quietly. I had to save it before it died.

I stared momentously at the wine next to me and communicated with it telepathically.  “We can do this.” I imagined the wine glass, my companion, to nod at me supportively.

And then after about 10 more minutes of no brilliance, no bright ideas, no magical writing dust, I surrendered to my wilting mind, closed the word document  and got on Facebook.

Jason's Wrath

       I cowered quietly as I waited for Jason’s wrath to decompose, the way a tree bends during the eye of a bad storm. He was a hellacious force to be reckoned with during his streaks of anger. He was big, very big, which made for a leaping head start in the intimidation race. He towered at a neck-breaking six feet and six inches (nearly a foot and a half taller than I), with fists like bowling balls, legs like thick, unbreakable tree trunks  firmly planted in their place. His voice was thundering, eyes piercing. He was a truly frightening presence, angry or not.

I let him yell, hearing in slow, amplified sound every cutting, spiteful word he’d spit at me and hearing nothing at the same time, except my own prayers being whispered anxiously in my mind, begging for the end. I’d close my eyes, partially wincing in fear of the objects flying past my face and partially to shield my young eyes from the terror that stood before me. My boyfriend.

Unable to hold back my cries any further, I let out accidentally a coughing, guttural gasp followed by a cascade of burning tears that I was unable to stop, like a dam that had been broken, letting free a powerful monsoon. In my mind, I panicked, knowing what this meant. His shadow covered me like the moon standing in front of the sun in a full solar eclipse. The shadow was cold. I felt chilled to my bones and shivered, waiting  for what would come.

Words that I had practically memorized started slithering out from between his gritted teeth in a nearly inaudible, but ever-frightening whisper only millimeters from my face. Words about how I needed to stop crying unless I wanted something to cry about. Words about how I would walk home if I didn’t shut the fuck up. Words about my pathetic panic disorder and words about this being my final warning before I paid for my sounds.

I did everything in my power to keep the cries to a minimum, to make them stop if I were to be blessed with a miracle. They didn’t stop. They didn’t even hush. They got worse. The tears stabbed at my throat and screamed to come out, and like vomit, I couldn’t hold it back. It was involuntary, and irritated sorely by my condition. So it got louder, thus worsening my punishment.

In a quick, seamless motion, my tiny shoulders were trapped in between his monstrous inviolable grip and I was trapped, not to say I wasn’t already at the moment I was lost in his cold, dark shadow. I felt my heart, stomach, and mind all sink at the same second. Everything in my head disappeared and black, liquid fear replaced all the blood that was rushing furiously through my veins.

I did not put up even a hint of struggle as he rattled my body back and forth vigorously, my neck flopping frontwards and backwards noodle-ishly like a ragdoll. My head was an earthquake, all the words inside of it now jumbled around like the pieces in a Scrabble™ game. But I didn’t resist, certainly didn’t fight back, and didn’t try to pull my shoulders free. I knew better by now. I knew better.

I waited in throbbing agony for the cyclone to be over. It ended with a hard shove sending my back and head barreling into the wooden bureau behind me. It hurt but it was a relief that the rattling had stopped. Thank God (which was what I did every time I saw the end and still had my senses about me).

I involuntarily clutched the back of my head as the ache came pounding on my skull like an angry burglar at the door, doing everything in its power to come in. I let it in. Swirling in a dizzy haze, I saw Jason's sideways body walking towards me. I felt a mild kick to the cushy part of my waist, thankful that it wasn’t as hard as I knew it could have been, (more of a “Is-the-pathetic-thing-dead-yet?” kind of kick) accompanied by some group of demoralizing words.

And then he left the room, probably to fetch himself a Gatorade.

Author's Note

I'm staring at my blog page, reading through old posts and sheepishly realizing that I haven't posted anything since October. I hope you all don't think that means I haven't written  since then, but if you do, you wouldn't be too far off base. I write still (of course, I write), but it's nothing to boast of. It's usually in small, broken almost-paragraphs, and typically after about 3 or 4 glasses of wine (wine I enjoy, not wine I drink to just to get my head to shut up).  Consequently, this ends up leaving me with some of the most senseless and poorly punctuated pieces since, probably, my lunchbox days.

For those of you who don't already know this, I've also had a very struggle-some past year. It's been a very rough, bumpy road (sorry for the amateurish vocab, haven't written recently!) with a lot of work and little to no play...definitely not the story I want to be writing for my life. I've recently lived in a world of very low creativity, very little inspiration, and a lot of wasted time.

The Deadly Sin of the Year Award goes to.......Sloth!!

That being acknowledged, I'm ready (I think) to get out of this funk and back into my life! I have a lot of upcoming changes that are going to be difficult and highly beneficial. I'm going to be dipping into a lot of new things, some of which may blow your mind, and/or some of which may bore you completely. All of them, however, will be stimulating to me (the point, I think, of this big endeavor called 'Life') and they will boost my imagination, my creativity and my inner fire in ways that have yet to be roused previously.

I wrote a piece a few months ago that I've been hiding away from all of you people in the dark, dusty unknown depths of the 'Documents' folder of my desktop. The piece is written from my perspective of an abusive relationship. This is not to say that any of the incidents that are written did or did not happen exactly, vaguely or at all how they are described. Some of it may be true, some of it may be totally fictional. I find it extremely therapeutic for me to write off this angle. It leaves a lot of room for plenty of descriptive use, and it's easy for me to paint you a picture, my favorite thing to do when I'm writing!

The villain (er, boyfriend) of these pieces will have been inspired by a guy (or multiple guys) I used to date. Let's call him Jason. Whether or not you feel as though you know specifically who may have inspired this character, keep it to yourself please. I didn't write these stories to be questioned or to raise any eyebrows or concerns. They are solely written for the purpose of me to exercise my writing and do not, I repeat, DO NOT in any way, shape, form, matter, case, time (et cetera) represent the relationship I am currently in.

My current boyfriend's name is Shawn. That's his real name. He's an amazing man for those of you who don't know this (which may be many as Shawn is a very private person), who is extremely strong-willed and rarely to never swayed. His mind is the most firm and untainted mind I have ever had the priviledge of exploring. He is never trying to meet the standards of society and is never pressured into doing the things he doesn't wish to do. This can make for a sometimes frustrating relationship as you might imagine ;) but it's benefitted me and matured me in ways that I never thought could be possible. He can be very rough around the edges, but his heart is always in the right place. He's just incredible, and has never ever even come close to laying a hand on me. And you can take that to the bank. It's not about him.

Back to what I was saying, these pieces are inspired from true pain, but not necessarily from actual events. The point, in closing, is for me to get some exercise.

Thank you for taking the time to read my note. It's been a long delayed pleasure to write again for an audience. Be on the look out soon for a never-before-read very raw, very graphic prose about my personal views of a very bad, heart-breakingly unhealthy but in the end, highly self-strengthening relationship.

Namaste, folks.

Drunk

      The Unbecoming Reality of Last Night's Alcoholic Rendez-vous

I sat up and immediately regretted it. A whirlwind of alcohol spun through my head and made my already poor vision even blurrier. It was a bowling ball rolling heavily in my skull, and I felt the wine and vodka splashing against the walls of my stomach. I opened my sticky mouth and clutched my aching ribs. My naked skin was so soft, and hot to the touch. I winced as my mind tried to put together the reality of the blurry clutter before me. My clean and dirty clothes lied together on the floor beside me. Books and papers neighbored them, amongst other miscellaneous objects that needed to be put away. None of the mess fazed me in the least. All I could think about was the burning thirst in my throat.


I stumbled into the bathroom and leaned over the sink. I rested there for a minute, letting the ball that was swaying back and forth in my head come to a slow stop. When I was sure I wouldn’t pass out or throw up, I lifted the knob on the faucet and desperately threw cold water on my face. The cool wetness splashed against my lips and then I could not help but shovel the water in my mouth, crudely and unrefined. Handful after handful of cool running tap water releasing the dry stickiness on my tongue and opening up my throat, it was a miracle in my mouth. And although I knew even at the time that drinking from the sink might just make me more sick, I couldn’t resist my instincts to relieve my desiccated mouth and scorching throat in that unbecoming moment.

I brushed my teeth for probably 10 minutes, and then indulged myself in the water one more time. I wiped my hands and face inelegantly across the hanging hand towel and staggered back to my bed, holding myself up by the walls around me, barely having the strength to pull the covers back over my body when I finally sprawled across the disaster that was my mattress.

Waking Up Alone

Music: The Lion Fell in Love With the Lamb by Carter Burwell

I lied in bed not aware that I was awake. My partial sleep washed around me, like a wave, drifting back and forth between reality and a dream. I don’t know what I was dreaming or if I was, but I was not aware. I rolled over and reached my arm out to nothing. He was not there. I felt around, but touched nothing but sheet.  I started a low, unawake whimper, wondering if he’d left me. My weak arms felt around, my eyes still closed, hoping to grasp him. He wasn’t there. My breathing became rapid, and in an attempt to open my eyes, I could not stop squeezing them shut. My cry became loud and forced, and in an instant panic, I jolted upright, my eyes wide and my breath caught.  I squeezed my ribs tight, breathing heavily, and looked around.  Thoughts rushed around disorganized in my panicked mind. ‘What had happened? Why didn’t I wake up when it did? Was I forgetting something about yesterday? What happened yesterday?’ And then in an instant, real life came back into clear focus, and I knew exactly where I was. Shawn had never left me. He was at work. I was in my bed.  He was here now, he was living with me. I didn’t have to call, I didn’t have to walk around my quiet empty house all alone, trying to search for his smell. He was here now.

Almost every day, I woke up stuck in a nightmare about the days he was not here. It was like I was reliving the day after he left over and over every time I woke up alone. 

He would visit me, stop me from being alone, and make me whole and alive. We ate together, drank together, kissed, and promised ourselves a chaste relationship for all the best reasons. He was a gorgeous figure. He looked nothing like me. He was tall, with soft, cleanly white skin. His smile was crooked and immaculate. His auburn hair somehow matched his green eyes perfectly. Everything about his face was sculpted impeccably. But he was so far away, and my chances to see him were slim, and short-lived when they were taken.  Loving him from afar was an incredible journey. But seeing him in the flesh, loving him in person was beyond the farthest depths of intimacy. I could stay up all night, listening to him speak, watching the curves in his lips and the expressions in his eyes, occasionally being pushed over the crevice of inner peace when he would do that half-laugh smirk when he thought of something pleasing. 

I would fall into a state of surrealism when he would lie with me, quietly and just stare. My body would become paralyzed because of all the blood rushing to my cheeks at the slightest glimpse of his real face. I remember the divine comfort I would feel from him, when I was lying there with something I loved so delicately simply to be with him, and not being forced to give up my physical innocence or be made to feel like an object of desire, but a desire much, much deeper than anything I ever thought existed in a man’s heart. The feel of his hands pushing softly through my hair would sail me slowly into a sleep deeper than my lonely, insomniatic mind was ever able to reach on its own.

And then, after the long weeks I would wait to see him, aching every day for his physical being to hold onto, and all the nights I would push with all the strength within me to stay awake so that I would not stop hearing his voice, and after all the meals I’d skip so that I was not eating without him, and all the dreams I’d have of him, he would be here and then he would be gone before I could fully wrap myself around him. He was like a cloud of smoke too delicate to touch. He would linger, beautifully in my reach. Close enough for me to breathe him in, but gone with even the softest embrace. 

I would spend that night miserable and quiet, the nights he’d have to leave me. I fell into silence, and despair, beaten to death by his absence and left to dry in a catatonic state. And then the morning after, I’d forget he was gone. I’d come awake from my dreams in bliss, searching for the smell of my love.  And then, to my much horrified realization, I would wake up alone, reaching for him, panicking slowly as I would come back to reality knowing that he was gone. And my memory had been washed away in my sleep. And there I would lay, thin and alone and wanting him, with nothing to give but the tears I had run out of the night before.

Me In A Bottle

Hello again, Writing.

It’s been a long time, I know, so please be easy on me. I haven’t been alone in so long, I almost forgot how. Same goes with writing. Sometimes, it feels like you are my only friend. And what is that really saying of me?

            I feel the unhappiness sinking in. It hurts, really bad. How many times am I going to run into this? Just look at what you’ve gone and done.

            Words can’t even begin to explain how hot I am, the temperature. I feel like a person could cradle their hands around my body and warm themselves from the heat it generates.  Times like these really make me miss Ange. We never do anything together anymore.

            This is one of those boring pieces that I write that will never amount to anything, will not in any way be interesting, and I will probably end up deleting without even reading it over.

            Anyways, perhaps I really need to go somewhere, leave. And be entirely, completely alone. Fall in love, but irrevocably with myself. Just have my own house, to be heart-achingly ugly in, irresistibly beautiful, childishly funny, and intolerably angry. Cry instantaneously, sing in a voice that nobody would love and leave as I please. Talk to no one, smile at everyone, not one of them an inkling of the power boiling within me, not an idea in the slightest of what I am capable.

            I wanted to write to Louise, so badly. It would be a pleasure. But I just couldn’t. What would I say? I didn’t want to convey this unhappiness, this loneliness, in my letter. So I decided I’d better wait.

I realized that, here I was again, silent and hating it, not a clue in the world of what to do with myself when left alone. What a bad, bad thing it was.  It was just then that Shawn sent me a message to ask what it was I was doing. I looked around. What was I doing?

Sitting here. Too tired to move, too hot to stay here, unable to produce one clear thought, one full sentence, and my head in too much pain to keep crying.  So I responded, “Trying to remember how to be alone.”

It was then that I poured myself a big full glass of wine. I leaned back into the couch and took in a long drink.

 I sighed. 
     Ohh..
           now I remember...

The Days, The Good, The People, and The Writing

The days..
The days are all sort of blurring together. I barely even see the days. I see late afternoons and nights. And sunrises on the worst nights. Keeping to myself doesn't sound healthy, but it seems to work for me. It's too difficult to go out, and be around others and act like I'm liking it. I don't have much good to say. And the good I do have to say I can't really talk about. And my soul doesn't have the energy to help my mind make up something interesting. I avoid missing people by pushing them out of my mind and my life altogether. Some of you would know what I mean, unfortunately.

The good..
The good is really good. It's so good, it makes the nights that I can't sleep worth the insomnia.
The good is so good, it erases everything that hurts. And all I want to do is consume myself in it. Whenever I'm not distracted by the few things that eliminate the pain, I just want to run away to the good stuff and bury myself in it. I don't care where.


The people..
The people are amazing. They're so fascinated, it seems, with any information I have to offer. They seem to thirst for it, because I can't get away from the questions. I'm wondering who died and made my life so interesting. Because they never cared before. And I don't want to have to explain.

I wish I could just bury myself in a hole and not talk to anyone about it.

And the writing..
Well the writing is hard to do.
Hard like how it feels when a dentist pulls your teeth out.
Hard like trying to get a 24 year old man to dance,
Like waiting for a long headache to pass, or a stabbing in the leg.

Not life or death. But just painful and frustrating.
And the more I can't get it out, the more it sits inside me and poisons whatever's in there. 

I mean the writing is..
Well you can see what the writing's like.

Loathe I Do, The Day

Awake my eyes stay open, thus my heart is dead alone.
It sleeps in anguished coma as I lay awake at home.
The dark offers it’s comfort and its promises it keeps
That I may ache and cry in peace
While all the world asleeps.
And when the sun peeks out
And makes the shadows disappear,
And sleeping flowers all stand up
And smog returns to clear,
My face I take and bury so I cannot see the light,
And cry in burning anger that the sun erased the night.
I sit in throbbing solitude, in quiet misery.
I hate the day because it lendeth light
To see all things.. but not my love to see.

Pain on Autopilot

I’m okay.

I'm okay until I’m alone. Then I start to get itches. I start to feel the pain flooding in. Then in the flustered result of my panicked nervousness, I begin to drown, looking for something to make it stop, to take my eyes off of it, to help me look away. Because when I was little, if I got hurt, my parents would make me look away if it was bleeding, if it was ugly... if it was bad. There's a reason for that.

I’ve begun living on a day-to-day basis. Getting through one at a time instead of looking to the next week, or the months to come. I just get through Wednesday. Check. Thursday. Check. Friday. Did it. Saturday. Room for improvement. Sunday. Check. Monday...

My face turns sour to say it. Monday.

Work was good  Monday. It was steadily slow, just like Keith said it would be, the most pleasant kind of slow. Enough to keep me alive, not robotic and work mode-ish, but not slow enough to make me lazy and wish I was home. I steadily kept care of a few tables at a time, genuinely glad to be there.

I was happy, enjoying the company of the other co-workers. I even talked about the pain a little, that’s how good Monday was going.  I talked about it casually, like I talked about a day at the doctors. Not much emotion, concern, even though everyone else showed sympathy. I’d shambolically (but surely) become numb to the pain. I sincerely did not feel it. I kept an armor on, fully equipped with shields and weapons to protect myself with. I don’t feel it. I don’t need sympathy, I don’t need hugs.
But then it hit me. Well it didn’t even hit me. My armor would have protected me from that.

It gutted me.

It took a major blow to my stomach while I wasn’t looking, while I was happily pulling my ponytail tighter and grabbing a beer from the bar. Just, mid-sentence, there it was. The pain. Clobbering at me. Choking me from behind. And it’s grip was so tight I couldn’t yell for help. I stared at Cassandra, horrified, and I couldn't explain. So I just made an urgent beeline to a place, any place, where I could be alone. Because I knew it was too late to find sanctuary.

So I just trudged to find a place where it could beat me in private, where no one could watch, and do that pointless thing where they try to comfort me. Because they don’t know that the throbbing anguish is so much stronger than they are, dominant and more evocative than the sweet miniscule words of anyone else. It continued to keep punching me through their embraces.

I was oozing with pain. And all I could do was sob in agony, completely sloppy. Wet, loud, guttural cries. That’s all that came out while they watched me, frightened to death of me, I'd imagine. How I had just been fine moments ago. Just been smiling and catering to guests, assisting co-workers, laughing at everything. And now here I was. Crying and gasping like  I had just been violently attacked.

Humiliating. Excruciatingly demoralizing.

I clutched my ribs in hopes to keep it all in, to stifle the cry, and it helped a little. Not much. But any help seemed like so much to me. I think

The pain was causing insanity and at the time, and the insanity effected my judgment.

They relieved me from work. I was obviously not functional enough to even walk out of the bathroom alone, much less take care of three or four tables in a normal, civilized manner.

They told me to ‘Just go’. Which was all I wanted to do from the very first blow to the insides.
I thanked Keith and he seemed to selflessly understand.

I grabbed my things and I let them hug me, and I don’t know who was who. I just thanked.

It felt almost too good once I was outside. So good, I could not go straight to my car. So I didn’t.
I just sat on the bench and looked at nothing, sort of like I was waiting for a ride. But I was enjoying the fresh air, I think, the smell of oxygen, and the feeling of being alone.

Time passed, and I don’t know how much. I know I didn’t want to stay too long. I didn’t want someone to come out and see me still there after they went through the trouble of sending me home.
Thus began my detachment from reality.

I stood up and turned on my Autopilot.

Now, Autopilot is different than the numbness that I (so fortunately) feel on a day to day basis.. When I’m numb, I’m still me, I’m just without the pain. I can think clearly. I make conscious decisions. I’m alive.

But when I can't keep going, when something goes wrong in the cockpit, and my plane starts crashing down, I have Autopilot to take over everything.

When I turn on Autopilot, it allows my physical being to work and let’s the rest of me go dead. My brain accesses everything it knows I’m supposed to do and makes me do it without cognizant thought. I drift completely out of my conscious mind. My eyes are heavy and still. They don’t move. My words are mechanical. My actions are automatic. I just do. But I am, not.

I walked thoughtlessly to the car, one foot in front of the other. My Autopilot knew where my car was parked. I didn’t. Autopilot drove me home. I know that in between, I got gas, sent messages, rejected phone calls, paid tolls, turned off the radio, and got off on all the right exits. But I do not remember a moment of it. I don’t remember it so much that I almost hope that I did do all those things as I thought.
I was completely thoughtless. I don’t remember the drive, the buildings around me, signs, cars, people. It is not in my memory at all.
I only remember wanting to go fast.
Flying home.
Flying home on autopilot. .
I desperately just wanted to just get to the house, get out of the jeans and dirty clothes, and have space to rip my hair out. I wanted to be alone, drink something. Clean everything. Indulge in my beautiful fortuitous escape. My sanity. Or insanity. And just write all this shit out.

The Insomniatic Severity of a Nighttime Thought Attack

I never in my life have been so confused, so muddled, so bizarrely ridiculously exhausted by a stupid desire as the one you have thrust upon me.

I laid in bed for nearly two hours subsequent to reading two chapters of my New Moon book before realizing I was not going to fall asleep in enough time to get a reasonable amount of slumber. There were only four more hours left until I had to wake up and begin my eleven hour day with Owen. Owen, the sweet, fitful, and above all, loud eight month old that I had agreed to baby-sit two to three days a week, frankly, for the price of a peanut.

But too many thoughts were screaming disorganized and hazed through my head and they wouldn’t be quiet! I did not even ask so much as to mute them, but I wished I could just turn the volume down enough so that they would become a low hum or murmur, and not this terrible screeching noise far too piercing to ignore.
I was lying in bed, crushed, crying, having a severe thought-attack. I tried everything to make it go away. I tried to run my fingers through my hair and gently over my face. That usually soothed me during a panic episode. But this was not a panic. It was much more inescapable.

I cried. I tried to plump and flip my pillows. I laid my head on the foot-side of the bed. I tried to think about Twilight, my newest area of interest, tried to imagine the velvet voice of Edward Cullen. Mmm. That only made me think more. I muted the TV. My thoughts became louder. I tried to listen to Tilsley, my muse, my teacher, my high school mentor. I tried to find his voice and imagine he was there. I tried to remember the words he used when he would tried to calm me down from a panic episode. I could hear him, faintly, amongst the bustle of memories, worries, and concerns fist-fighting in my mind.

“Turn it off. Stop listening to all that garbage and go to sleep.”
I tried to obey his aged, wooden words, but hearing them was hard enough. I wished stupidly that I could act on his wisdom.
He scolded me with love, as he tried to help me from becoming overwhelmed in thought-overload. But I couldn’t gain control over it.
“Just let the thought pass through. It‘s okay if it comes in, but don’t let it fix itself a drink and make itself at home in your mind. Simply tell it to walk on through.”
Bills and money problems laughed at me at the highest point in my head. Owen’s cry echoed and seared into my ears. Texas Roadhouse lit a cigarette and made itself comfortable, reminding me that I would be seeing very much of it in the next week.
“Come on Gallo. Do you control your issues or do they control you?”
My ex boyfriend whacked my head into a window and spit at me.
“Grow a backbone.”
Paul insisted that we were wrong for each other. That we weren't happy.
“Try to find a peaceful place.”

I sought out frantically in my mind, trying to find some place serene, some place where they couldn’t get to me. I searched. I trudged. I hollered…
But I could not find it. The thoughts jumped at me left and right. They pulled me by my every limb, blindfolded me and clasped their hands over my mouth so I could not even call for the place to find me. In my tortured frustration, I sat up, in a quick but heavy breath. I looked around and the noise was gone. I knew I had to get up to keep it away.

I decided not to shower just yet. I didn’t want too feel to clean and comfortable. I was afraid that would make me tired and it this point, it was useless to sleep. I decided to get into the frumpiest things I could find, whatever felt good on my body. I pulled my hair into a low ugly pony tail. My ears stuck out and my face was pale and washed out, dirty with the combination of old make-up, dried sweat, and fresh tears. I grimaced into the mirror. I was atrocious.

I fixed myself an icy water in my favorite stubby bulb glass and tucked my laptop underneath my arm. I nuzzled myself at the end of the couch, in between the plush and giving cushions and logged into my computer. The clock on my screen read 2:30 exactly. I knew it would not be hard for someone like me to pass 3 and a half hours without much struggle. I go through time like fish go through water…unfortunately.

I spent the time doing nothing to solve a single problem, doing no research, no damage control of any kind. I spent my time writing and finding new music. Relaxation. Eventually, I got the idea to make a ‘Twilight Playlist” on my iPod. I did a search and found every song that was played in the movies, Twilight and in New Moon. Listening to each song not only brought me right back to the scenes that the songs were played in, but I listened to them so much that they began to remind me of my own life. I listened to how each composition intertwined with my insides, how it related to me. I downloaded almost 40 songs and sat peaceful in my Heaven, smiling inside at the sound of the music. I wondered why I hadn’t loved these songs before. I enjoyed myself in a guilty kind of pleasure.

Before I knew it, 5:30 peeked in and knocked on the outer edge of the door.
“May I interrupt?” he solicited.
“I suppose” I retorted, slightly displeased, not that so much time had passed, but that I had to be grasped from the short rapport I had found with my inner self.

I crept into the bedroom, gulped at the flat, tasteless water I had left next to the bed, and slipped into the bathroom. I pulled out a crisp towel, and grinned far too wide when I realized that I could finally use my new robe that Grandma had sent! It was clean white (and I knew it wouldn’t be in the next month), with a pink stripe going down the side vertically. ‘Natalia’ read horizontally at the top in a matching color. She bought me the robe for Christmas, but took it back so she could get my name stitched on it. It was worth the wait.

My shower was a blissful Heaven, entirely uninterrupted, be it from cold water, knocks on the door, pestering thoughts, beeping text messages, or even the time. To my most gracious surprise, nothing tried to intervene. I was in a heated, idyllic wrinkle in time. Nothing was in my head. I showered a warm, perfect shower, listening to my newly added songs from the bathroom speakers.

I got the scheduled 6:10 am call from April, the one she made every morning to assure herself that I was awake, and I wasn’t sometimes.
“Hey sunshine! It’s me.”
“Hey April. No worries, I’m awake--” still.

April arrived at the exact time she always did: 6:21 am, and always “running late”.

I was almost in pain from the cold I felt as she entered my house from the brisk outside. The 22 degree weather made for a wretched disappointment in my attempt of escaping the cold Denver brisk through my decision to move to the Sunshine State.

She seemed slightly surprised at my wide awake appearance; showered with light make up, smelling fresh and my hair still wet.
“Ah, you look awake today.” The same awake from yesterday.
“Yeah, I am” I replied, accordingly with a smile.
“You took a quick shower this morning?” she prodded.
“Actually, it was a long one. Really relaxing. I’ve--been up..” all night.
She smiled, seemingly pleased. The idea that I was adjusting to this lifestyle was probably a relief in her mind, as we had discussed that my sleep schedule may be off enough to prevent me from watching Owen several times a week.

We chatted, today a little less awkward than normal. I genuinely was wide awake, perhaps that had an effect on my morning social abilities. Owen seemed especially cute today, dressed entirely in white and with a smile. I knew by the end of the day, he would look a disaster and probably be screaming.

When April left, I played with Owen so he would not realize she was gone. He was more cooperative than usual. He was giggly, happy, --hungrier than I’d ever seen-- and a pleasant company to have with me amidst my rather peaceful morning..

I dreaded the sun coming out, and it was trying to rise. It was a slow rise. The sun didn’t sneak in between my blinds for what seemed like almost an hour posterior to my seeing a shade of light in the sky. It was beautiful, but I despised sunrise.

Because when the sun was gone, life was better. Everything went to sleep and I stayed awake and made everything right in the world. In my world.

I logged into Facebook and played around, pointlessly, as my witty, blog-worthy, not to mention nocturnal thoughts tucked themselves into bed and bid me “Good day,” warning me not be sad and assuring me they would see me sometime past midnight. I fiddle-faddled and decided to check my horoscope.

It said that I should be excited to welcome my distant family back into my life and read that 8:00 am would be a “lucky” time of day for me. Just as I read it, I glanced at the clock on my screen. 8:01. I looked around. Owen was asleep on the floor and the sun was up now. Bed time.