Spitfire Words

I’m sitting here contemplating another night without sleep. Self-flagellation or pain avoidance I can’t tell. I tell myself if I stay up it’s longer until I have to go to work. If I go to bed now I blink and it’s time to walk in the cold and dark to another 14 hour shift. I don’t hate my job. I enjoy it even. Sometimes it’s the only thing that saves me from what’s inside my head.

But sometimes I can’t face a day of being responsible for anyone but myself. I relinquished that right and duty six years ago and now I pretend at it for stretches so long the following day is lost to exhaustion. And I can’t lose another day.

I have so much to do.

I can’t face doing any of it.

If only I had Benard’s watch. The stupid stopwatch from a show I watched as a kid. And I could just make everything stop for awhile. I could remove the pressure and the responsibilities for however long I need.

I can’t. They’re always there. There’s never a day there’s nothing I should be doing. Never a day without worry over something. Usually multiple somethings, including a few somethings that I only worry about because my messed up brain likes to throw in a few unnecessary extras.

So I contemplate gaining more time through sleeplessness. Again. And again, and again.

Chances are I won’t do anything with the ‘extra’ time. I’ve been down this road too many times before to pretend to myself that it’s some kind of bargain, that if I stay awake I’ll trade in one of my worries. It makes me sick, I know it does, but so does pretty much everything else these days.

If I’m going to kill myself, work myself to death, let it be through at least pretending that I have a choice.

I also know what’s going on in my head might go away with sleep, and in a way that keeps me awake. Because I can think about banishing my demons with dreams, but what if it doesn’t work? What if I wake up every bit as scared and worried and despairing and exhausted as I went to bed? What do I do then but admit that I’ve lost?