Untitled. Unedited. Unthoughtout. 2. (919 hits)
Category: NoneRating: 1.62 on 15 reviews (Rate this item) (V)
Submitted by lessthanfour <ossum.at.ossum.dot.net> (View user info) at 2004-11-29 11:54:55 EST
Part one: http://www.ubersite.com/m/52516
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I sleep for shit most nights. They give me pills to help me sleep, but I just pretend to swallow them, and the orderlies pretend to not notice. I don't know how much they get paid, but I guess it's not enough to fuck around with a crazy dude over a few measly pills. There's no real reason for me to not just swallow them, but I guess I'd rather experience life on my own terms, right? I'd rather suffer the long nights, the terrifying lows and excruciating highs than be flat all the time. Flat and complacent. Maybe the pills would help, but then again maybe I'd be zonked all day long, like James over there. Look at him, slumped over in his wheelchair. He can barely keep his eyes open four hours a day--Not that you'd notice even if they were open, hollow as they are. They put him in his chair in the morning and wheel him into the common room with the rest of us, but it's like he never gets out of bed.
Yeah, I'd rather deal with the long nights than end up like him.
But anyway, I can't sleep for shit. You know how a lot of people say they don't dream? Fuck those guys, because I honestly usually don't dream. I rarely sleep long enough and deep enough to reach REM sleep, which doesn't really help with my case of the crazies, you know? I wake up several times a night, to piss (in the toilet, if I'm lucky and the nurse feels like trusting me enough to unstrap me) or because some schmuck is screaming again, or because I can't get comfortable strapped to this cot. I never sleep for more than thirty minutes at a stretch. My mind just won't shut off, you know? I'm lying there with my eyes screwed shut breathing deeply trying to remain calm while my mind repeats the introductory sentence to some novel I read years before. Or the theme song to Entertainment Tonight. Over and over, faster and faster, crescendoing until I think my head must explode. It's enough to make a man scream. So I do.
It doesn't help.
Sometimes I get so tired I literally pass out. I'm lying in bed in the dark looking at the celing and next thing I know I feel like shit, so it must be morning. Maybe I dream these nights but I never recall it and I never feel refreshed in the morning, so does it really matter? It's like I finally understand that adage about a tree falling in the woods, you know? For all my supposed smarts, I never really got that one. I always stuck by the laws of physics and probabilility: If 100 trees were observed as falling and making sounds, then it's safe to assume an unobserved tree would act the same way.
But now I understand the saying. Fuck Zen and Buddhism and all combinations and permutations thereof, though. It's a perfectly cynical and wry saying and I love it. Basically, it's saying that if you don't get to experience something, as far as you're concerned it never happened, never existed. For instance, my friend Mark, probably the only friend I have left, sent me a care package. The orderlies opened it and went through it and decided that I shouldn't have it, so I never got it. Did Mark ever send the package? Does a tree falling in the woods make a sound if nobody is around to hear it? Maybe it did, but did it do me any bit of a fuck of good? No, so fuck it.
Take James for another example. He breathes and eats and shits, but he hasn't lived a day since he came here. They feed him, but he doesn't taste it. They pipe music into the common room, but he doesn't hear it. His brain keeps him alive, but he doesn't think. What a waste. I keep waiting for him to make a sound, but he's silent no matter how often he falls.
Fucking trees.
But sleep, yes. Have you ever tried to sleep in a hotel? That's always been a big problem for me. Unfamiliar bed in an unfamiliar town with unfamiliar lights casting all too familiar shadows of monsters on the unfamiliar floor. Air conditioning left over from the 1950s that is either set to off or arctic clicking on in the middle of the night, loud enough to drown out the people fucking in the next room over. That's what every night here is like for me, except here the monsters are real. Here the monsters sleep in the beds next to me, in my bed.
It's been three months, but this bed is still unfamiliar, and I fear the day it becomes home.
Anyway, the point of all this--last night I slept like a baby, and I wish to god I hadn't. The dreams came. The ones I always get when I allow myself to. Dreams of her. Dreams of the only time in my miserable life when I was happy, when I felt loved, when I loved.
And I wake up and I forget where I am and why I'm here and that she's not next to me. And for about thirty groggy seconds, life is agonizingly sweet.
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This is a bit more picked over and rewritten than the original piece, but it's still just basically sitting down and writing. I still don't really have any idea what's going to happen until I start typing. Continue?
User Reviews
Submitted by thecaes (user info) at 2005-01-29 15:48:15 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Not that I have first hand experience of what the nuthouse is like, but you describe it in a way that totally resonates with me. The madness and nature of the madness comes across very clearly without being cliched or overdramatic. Good stuff.
Submitted by jenngd9 (user info) at 2004-12-05 23:35:19 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by munkeypants (user info) at 2004-12-03 14:18:03 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by lessthanfour (user info) at 2004-12-03 12:05:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Part three http://www.ubersite.com/m/53331
Submitted by dizzyupthegirl (user info) at 2004-12-02 07:03:24 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
continue.. please continue... if it goes somewhere, i wanna be there to hear it.
Submitted by tshia2 (user info) at 2004-12-02 00:29:54 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
pretty good
Submitted by Sideburns (user info) at 2004-12-02 00:05:24 EST (#)
Ranking: -2
No Comment
Submitted by Davros (user info) at 2004-12-01 12:40:47 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
More please.
-Davros
Submitted by wookie (user info) at 2004-12-01 12:22:55 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
No Comment
Submitted by downerSTAIN (user info) at 2004-12-01 12:19:25 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Definitely more. This series is very underrated.
Submitted by MyNameIsTim (user info) at 2004-11-30 23:13:27 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
again, really well written. interesting. sad. difficult to believe? maybe. maybe not.
more people should be reading this.
thanks for letting me know, and keep them coming.
Submitted by darko (user info) at 2004-11-30 23:09:36 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
this fucking piece of shit
Submitted by Shaun_Rocks (user info) at 2004-11-30 22:49:26 EST (#)
Ranking: 2
Man I really like this series, there's just something about it that really interests me. Great work, definately keep them coming. And thanks for letting me know about it, I'd appreciate if you let me know when the next one is finished
Submitted by lessthanfour (user info) at 2004-11-30 18:11:20 EST (#)
Ranking: 0
Kind of sad that this only got one review. I'd rather hear 'this is a fucking pice of shit' than nothing at all.
Bitches.
Submitted by jgreening (user info) at 2004-11-29 12:07:57 EST (#)
Ranking: 1
Sure. Might get better, might get worse, I'll still read.