All I want to do is sleep, but I tried that and I still woke up at three AM like it was time to work. I have two terrible habits, and one of them is that I can’t get anything done until everyone else is still.
A body in motion stays in motion, though sometimes it’s just motion and nothing graceful or inspirational, so while I gave myself permission to be behind in this writing project, I know better than to dip out of the momentum. Unless it’s the middle of the night, my body at rest stays at rest.
Plus I’m better when I’m busy. In the last three weeks, even though I’ve slept less and feel a constant treading-water sensation, I’ve remembered more tasks, made my own food more often, replied to more emails on time, and generally adulted better than I have in months. One thing to the next thing and if there’s only five minutes between, then the third thing goes there. Too many breaks and I space out, daydream, wish for more.
Sleep until three because I can.
But tonight, I’d rather write a shitty string of words than drown for the sake of eyes that might sting less in the morning.
My eyes refuse to open until they are ready, and they rebel if I force the issue, red with anger and plump with tears, swollen as the pout of a toddler who won’t look you in the face. I can eschew sleep for a few days at a time, and then I sleep for fourteen hours and it fixes everything. I’ve been told this cannot be true, but it’s truth enough for me and the proof is in my eyes which will then open of their own accord.
Today is not a fourteen hour sleep day. Today is a day I finish things because I have two terrible habits, and the other one is that I start things and abandon them when they are not perfect.
That’s a lie.
I abandon them when I can’t make myself be perfect enough to keep them going.
Once, I thought, if I could, though? If I could force my eyes open, fight through all the streaking pain, be as awake as I could be and write before midnight, if I could? Then would I be real? Then would you stay? Then would I?
I write about you because it’s all I have left to make you real.
It’s one thing to the next thing and I work better with a deadline, so if four hours of sleep is the bare minimum, that’s the time I will get things done. Three AM and no sounds, no distractions, no updates, no you.
My eyes will sting in the morning and they would anyway, so I might as well feel something in the meantime. Even if that feeling is that I’m just barely hanging on to a shitty string of words.
A brain in motion and nowhere to go.