(You are not the only crazy nut case out there.)

2am:

I... don't trust you any more. I cannot rely on you, cannot reach out to touch you. I have lost that, inexplicable sense of attachment, that easy breezy comfort, I used to have with you, that belief, that you would never do anything to hurt me. And I'm tired of keeping up this tightly constructed charade. Perhaps it is high time to let go. It was I who struggled pointlessly, clinging on to the past, hoping to prolong the inevitable.

It is over. I can't summon the strength to try any harder. It is time to let go. It is time to let you go, and move on.

3am:

Waiting is all I do these days. Waiting for the sun to come up, for night to fall, for a nice enough song to play on the radio amidst all the junk and advertisements while I stare at the ceiling, waiting for the colours in my memories to surge and fade away, for emotions- that hardness and softness- to drip like a soggy sponge and wrinkle my fingers and then slowly, magically, dry up, for unbroken spells of silence, and then for random senseless words: quixotic incandescent mendacity, tremulous and tender, soaring through the stratosphere... I spin them round and round with my tongue, ramble like a black witch, taste their meanings in my mouth, their musical sounds, ting-a-ling, strung like beads on a string around my neck.

I could stop this passive escapism, swallow the peanut-butter-thick anticipation, for once, actually, dare, to confront the truth- How do I feel? What do I do? The truth, the truth... What is that, really? I'm too afraid to know. I'll wait, I'll wait for it to come find me, like a coward looking for a beating, let it knock me senseless, pow wow wow, leave me speechless, scrambling, crawling for another luminous dream to pry into.

4am:

God, dear dear God, I am so tired. This is too hard. I'm tired of pretending. I need help. I have to cure this insomnia. I have to stop doing this to myself. I have to get out, get away. I fear stark blinding insanity. I need to sleep. I'm tired of begging, pleading, wishing, waiting, waiting, waiting... I need to sleep, need to stay intact, need to function, focus hard, now now please.

5am:

The Play of Light and Shadow

We want to give ourselves away utterly
but afterwards we resent it, it is the same
with the sparrows, their eyes burn so coldly
under the dusty pines, their small chests swell
as they dispute a crumb, or the empty place
where a seed was once: this is our law too,
to peck and peck at the Self, to take turns
being I, to die in a fierce sidelong glance,
then to hold the entire forest in one tilt
of a tufted head, to take flight suddenly
and fuck in midair, tumbling upward.

-D. Nurkse.

6am:

Insomnia

Now you hear what the house has to say.
Pipes clanking, water running in the dark,
the mortgaged walls shifting in discomfort,
and voices mounting in an endless drone
of small complaints like the sounds of a family
that year by year you've learned how to ignore.

But now you must listen to the things you own,
all that you've worked for these past years,
the murmur of property, of things in disrepair,
the moving parts about to come undone,
and twisting in the sheets remember all
the faces you could not bring yourself to love.

How many voices have escaped you until now,
the venting furnace, the floorboards underfoot,
the steady accusations of the clock
numbering the minutes no one will mark.
The terrible clarity this moment brings,
the useless insight, the unbroken dark.

-Dana Gioia.

(I don't know what I'll do without poetry,
without words, to get me through the night.)

Good morning, world.
A brand new day awaits you.

Another, 4am:

I'm still wide awake.

I have been here, so many times before. I have experienced this shameful inertia and sleeplessness before, coupled with illogical depression and frustrating restlessness.

I'm fine when morning comes and the light starts to shine. I'm fine all through the day. I'm bubbly, talkative even, when the sky is bright and there is something, someone, stable, I can hold onto, to ground myself within some sort of liveable 'reality', to remind myself that there is actually a world out there, this great big world that exists outside of my tiny narrow-minded head. Nights are a little bit more tricky. I wrestle with nights, with suicidal tendencies, with shadows, with the past.

Yet the darker it gets, the more I sink, always, always, always, I hear a gentle voice, a whisper, that tells me, "Have heart. Have hope. Have faith. Just push on, push through, go on, for a little while longer. You can do this. You can, you can."

And somehow, miraculously, I find that I do, have the strength, to keep moving forward.

Don't ask me how, I just, do. When I love until it hurts, when I fight until my very last breath, when I am on the verge of giving up, when I stand on the line between madness and sense and pull my hair out, always, always, always, it tells me to go on, even when I say I can't god-damn-it I fucking can't can't can't, it tells me patiently, lovingly, to go on.

So I guess if you are still awake, if you are like me:

Have heart. Have hope. Have faith. Just push on, push through, go on, for a little while longer. You can do this. You can, you can.

Good morning, world.
A brand new day awaits you.
Here we go again.
You ready?